TORONTO — David Goyer, the filmmaker known for works such as the Blade trilogy, The Dark Knight, and Apple TV’s Foundation series, announced on Friday that he is developing a new blockchain-based science-fiction universe named Emergence. Emergence, as described by Goyer, revolves around themes like spaceships, relic-hunting, and white holes—classic sci-fi elements forming the core of an expansive transmedia project hosted on Incention, Goyer's new blockchain platform. During a panel discussion at CoinDesk’s Consensus conference in Toronto, Goyer appeared alongside SY Lee from Story Protocol, the intellectual property-focused blockchain that underpins both Incention and Emergence. Goyer shared his vision for Incention, explaining that the platform is designed to enable fans to collaborate in creating the Emergence universe alongside professional storytellers. “The idea is that we’re going to involve the community in all of this, and they’ll have an opportunity to create characters who will be joining the podcast, joining the animation, etc. , ” he explained. He criticized Hollywood’s traditional approach to intellectual property building, describing it as “very top down” and slow to evolve. “Franchises are built in the film and television industry [on] models that are a century old, ” he said. “It’s very hard to innovate. It’s very hard to break into Hollywood if you’re a newcomer. ” He sees Web3 as a potential catalyst for change. Launched in 2023, Story Protocol has secured over $80 million in funding from investors including a16z, Hashed, and Endeavor. The platform provides tools to register, track, and monetize intellectual property on the blockchain. “Each intellectual property has its own program, licensing and royalty-sharing rights, ” Lee explained during the event. “Without any middleman, someone can remix, license, and basically build upon someone else’s IP, ” he added.

“According to the rules set by the IP owner [. . . ] they could share the upside together. ” To anchor the Emergence universe, Goyer wrote an extensive 2, 500-page story bible. “We hired a bunch of really talented concept artists that had worked on the Harry Potter and Star Wars franchises, and a number of Hugo and Nebula Award-winning science fiction authors to write stories within the universe using the bible that I created, ” he said. This content also served as training data for an AI agent named “Atlas, ” which Goyer said will assist contributors in co-creating within a defined narrative framework. “This is what I would say is sort of a sanctioned use of AI, where we’re not just scraping information, ” he noted. Users of the Emergence platform can explore its characters and settings or generate their own. The community can upvote user-created stories and visuals, while an editorial board—led by Goyer—will decide which submissions become part of the official canon. “We’ll let our community up-vote the characters that the community themselves have created, ” he said. “Then the editorial board — which is myself and a few other people — will decide which of these characters best suits the overall franchise. ” “AI, Web3, blockchain — none of this stuff is going away, right?The whole world’s becoming tokenized, ” Goyer commented. “So, for my sake, I just thought this is something I need to learn about and get involved in. ” While AI and blockchain have sparked concerns over job losses and the commodification of creative work, Goyer hopes to leverage these technologies to empower artists. “It’s really about deciding whether I’m going to stick my head in the sand, or I’m going to have a seat at the table and see, in my own small way, whether or not I can help guide this in a way that’s beneficial to creative types like myself, ” he said.