At this year’s L.A. Comic Con, many Marvel fans had the surprise of their life when Stan Lee appeared at the convention as an interactive AI hologram.
Not only did it appear like the Marvel legend was standing in front of them, but fans were able to ask the late comic book creator questions in real time. The result was so lifelike – even responding to onlookers by name – that many had an overwhelmingly emotional reaction to the installation. Suddenly, a once-powerful presence at L.A. Comic Con had seemingly returned, and naturally video reactions of the experience went viral. But how was this possible?
Enter Proto Hologram. In a partnership with Kartoon, Hyperreal and authorized by the Stan Lee Universe, the technology offered fans a once-in-a-lifetime experience that Proto Inc. founder and CEO David Nussbaum hopes becomes an everyday technology.
Dubbed the world’s first holographic communications platform that includes its own hardware, software and app ecosystem, the company has already won a SXSW Innovation Award for connecting people and launched Nussbaum to the Time100 Health list of 2025.
With the power of a 7-foot-tall Proto machine, Nussbaum is working to connect, or beam, the world together in real time. After getting his start in broadcasting working at stations like CBS Radio, he became passionate about the process of bridging people together who weren’t in the same room.
However, he said no one really “understood my vision” for the type of show he dreamt of doing. He then moved over to the podcast space in 2007 where he conducted long-form interviews. It was there that Nussbaum met the late media personality and frequent Howard Stern guest Johnny Fratto. After his passing, Nussbaum realized Fratto was in possession of some rare patents. Specifically, the ones that helped bring late artists like Tupac Shakur to Coachella in 2012.
In 2018, Nussbaum founded Proto Inc., formerly known as Portal, and shifted his focus from bringing back late artists to connecting living humans to one another. By 2021 the entertainment industry had taken notice, and they weren’t the only ones. Over the last five years Proto Holograms have entered malls, award shows and even hospitals and doctor’s offices allowing users to connect in real time.
TheWrap spoke to Nussbaum about the Stan Lee experience, how the technology works to still honor his legacy even though nothing is “ever going to replace Stan Lee.” The founder also touched on some of the negative reactions to the L.A. Comic Con exhibit and the realization that “you’re never going to make everybody happy.”
Proto has also made its way into the film and television space with groundbreaking methods for advertising. We asked the Nussbaum about how the technology has been used to drive audiences to theaters for films like “A Minecraft Movie” and “The Conjuring” and his hopes for the future of Proto in movie theaters.
“Imagine walking into a movie theater lobby where you’re greeted by the actor in character. It’s not a flat cardboard cutout that you take a picture with, but you can actually engage with the character,” he said. Sound a bit fantastical? Sound a bit futuristic? Well, that’s exactly the idea.
TheWrap: You founded the company in 2018. Take me through your thought process of what you thought technology like this could accomplish.
Nussbaum: I was a broadcaster. For 25 years, I was working for CBS Radio and other large and small market radio stations and broadcasting companies. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to be was journalist, an interviewer, a speaker. I’m just obsessed with communications and broadcasting. I started a podcast in 2007. And every radio station that ever hired me, no program director ever really understood my vision for what type of a show I would want to do. My podcast was, was a long-form interview show, and I met all my celebrity friends. On that podcast, I met a guy named Johnny Fratto, rest in peace, who was the guardian of some rare patents that were famously used to put Tupac on stage at Coachella. They were just sitting under a layer of dust, and nobody was using them. So I co-founded a company. So we acquired those patents, and within months, we were bringing back all these late legends.
So, although we had not physically done Tupac, the patents that we now owned brought Tupac back. We were licensing them to Cirque du Soleil for Michael Jackson, and Whitney Houston and Roy Orbison, and so all of a sudden, these patents were being used and exploited in incredible ways.
So I’m running this business. I’m bringing back dead musicians, but I can’t stop thinking about broadcasting and communication and how little I loved essentially digitally resurrecting the late. I’ve always wanted to connect with the living, so I stopped doing that. Started my own company called Portal at the time, where instead of bringing back the dead, and I know we just did this thing with Stan Lee, which goes against everything that I’m talking to you about, but the origin story is I wanted to create like a telephone booth style display that would allow a person to be anywhere in the world and communicate and connect with anybody else in the world. So instead of talking into a microphone and hearing your voice come out of a speaker, or instead of looking at a TV camera and seeing your face on a screen, I thought, what if I could send you and make it look like you’re there and you’ll have the ability to see and hear and interact with everybody in your audience.
So it’s live when it’s someone who is living?
It’s live when it’s somebody who’s living. But it can also be pre-recorded. It could also be AI. But the original concept was, if you can’t be there, beam there, right? I surrounded myself with smarter people. The company has really exploded into these other areas, all things software, programming and probably the biggest hit Proto has ever seen is, is the evolution of our AI platform.
I want to talk about the AI of it all.
You know, people were afraid of the internet. People were afraid of the smartphone I have. I sometimes go back and watch old videos. I like watching old, old speeches by like Steve Jobs, you know when he had, like, long hair, and it’s kind of funny, like some of the questions that people were asking from the audience about the fear of the computers are going to take over. As he was able to explain it better than I can, it is not to replace, but it is to enhance. And so computers obviously have enhanced workers abilities to be more successful and scale their businesses better and hire more people.
I do want to talk about the living people aspect, but the Stan Lee experience really took off at L.A. Comic Con. I know that you had worked with Lee’s estate and got the blessing for that. I was curious how you were able to get the Stan Lee avatar to respond in real time to questions?
That place was crazy. Like, people love Stan Lee. They missed Stan Lee. I met the gentleman from Kartoon studios. They own the name and likeness rights of Stan Lee. And, of course, Marvel owns all of the work that he did over the years. They said they were walking around Comic Con over the last couple of years, and there wasn’t a hint of Stan Lee anywhere in the place, and it was depressing for them, because this is a guy who built Comic Con. This is a guy who was a main feature at Comic Con. And the fact that, you know, he’s been gone almost a decade and yet, the last couple of years, it’s almost like there was nothing of him there. They saw this as an opportunity to create a a new fan base, not to replace anything Stan Lee ever did. The AI that was used was created by Hyperreal, we did not create the Avatar, the brain. The prompt engineering was also done by our partners at Hyperreal. Proto obviously, consulted, assisted. Not a single thing Stan Lee said was inaccurate from what he had said when he was alive. This wasn’t like hooked up to chat GPT and it was just pulling answers. This was the ultimate library of all things Stan Lee ever said in an interview, on a red carpet at a panel, anything he wrote in a book or or said on a stage. This was everything Stan Lee over decades, 60, 70 years. All this was put in a library of knowledge that, when asked, it pulled from those very specific answers. And then it was delivered through a unique way, which is the Proto Hologram display.
Nothing is ever going to replace Stan Lee. This is why I stopped doing all the digital resurrection, or bringing back late legends. Thing is, you’re never going to make everybody happy. I like to make everybody happy. However, I was very happy with it as a Stan Lee fan. And Stan Lee, he created superheroes whose power was all intelligence and even hologram stuff. Look at Iron Man. I would never even try to think what Stan Lee might have thought. But for me, an amateur science-fiction guy, just like a guy looking in from the outside to give Stan Lee, sort of the superpower of all knowledge and holograms, was a was a gift I wanted to give. And I really hope that the fans enjoyed it. I certainly did.
Can you explain the Proto Hologram technology how you would explain it to a 5-year-old?
I’m completely basic when it comes to that. Again, I’m a broadcaster, not an engineer, so needed to surround myself with engineers, for them to explain to me what the hell it was that I innovated, right? So I started with nine or 10 prototypes that got worse with each new build. And just as I was down to my last nothing, I developed a hologram effect out of a transparent LCD front. The front is a 4k transparent window. It’s touch screen, which allows for there to be that type of physical interaction. Since we’ve developed it, we can now use gesture control and voice activation, as you would expect any smart device to have. It’s got tens of thousands of lumens of interior, evenly distributed light. So light is pouring in from the back the content, whatever the content is, whether it’s a person or an object or artwork or medical stuff. Because of the Proto effects, the software creates a volumetric projection of whatever it is.
So that’s what you’re looking at. You’re looking at a 7-foot-tall, 4-foot wide, 2-foot deep display that takes 2d images and makes them look volumetric or spatial. I’m not talking to a five-year-old or whatever, but I’m doing my best.
No, I’m following. So then you had to film all of these people, or you can build that just on the computer?
Well now you can. AI is becoming much more sophisticated. Anything can be either be created using AI as it continues to evolve, it could be filmed just with any with an iPhone or any 4k camera, or it could be built by anybody with some basic production, postproduction knowledge on their computer.
William Shatner had done a speech in Sydney, Australia using Proto Hologram. Was he able to film that from his own home or production studio live?
We beamed him from Los Angeles to a stage in Sydney, Australia. He was standing in front of hundreds of marketing and advertising executives. I get a call, “David. This is William Shatner.” I go, “Holy cow. This is insane.” When people think of beam me up, they think of William Shatner. So he calls me up. He says, “I hear you’re beaming people places, and it’s not me, and I’m the guy who made beaming people places famous. I’m in a bit of a pickle. I have accepted a speaking job in Sydney, Australia, but I don’t want to go there. Beam me up.” And so we did. We we stood him in front of a regular 4k camera that you could buy at Best Buy or any off-the-shelf camera. It’s nothing. It’s not like a hologram project or anything. And he materialized, Captain Kirk-style, 7000 miles away in real time. And the guy looked like he was physically on stage. He stood on stage, did 45 minutes of keynote. We had a return feed of the device, sending all this information back and so he was able to see the audience. So not only was he giving a keynote, but then there was a real time Q and A happening with the moderator on stage, and she was pulling questions from the audience. It’s like he was there. In fact, one of the comments said, “This is better than you actually being here,” Because they felt like when you look into a Proto camera, you’re making eye contact with everybody in the room. He was connecting with the hundreds of people instead of just the one person at a time. So he was connecting with people in a way that he wouldn’t have been able to had he physically been there. And he did say to me afterwards, “You’re not a hologram, you’re a time machine. You just saved me, like, two weeks of travel.”
Connection is a big thing for you. I think post-pandemic people still want live experiences and will go to places like Comic Con or to see William Shatner speak. Why do you think, especially in this post-pandemic climate that connection is so much more valued than it was maybe, like, six years ago?
Yeah. I mean, we’ve been taught a lesson. With Proto I want to create the essence, the feeling of presence. And so I’m very happy to go on a zoom if I have to share or receive information, but if I have a memorable message that I have to get across, whether it’s to my employees or whether it’s to groups of people, or maybe I’m a teacher and I want to talk to some university students or some K-12 students, or if I’m a doctor and I’ve got some pretty sensitive news that I want to share with my patient, I’m not doing that over zoom. I’m not texting that. This is a job for Proto because it is memorable, and in some cases, it’s more effective than physically being there in person.
The film industry has been struggling a lot. You have done activations for movies, in malls and things, and it felt like this new type of advertising. How do you think that Proto can really be used to help bolster the film industry and help get people back in theater seats?
Imagine walking into a movie theater lobby where you’re greeted by the actor in character. It’s not a flat cardboard cutout that you take a picture with, but you can actually engage with the character through our AI technology. You could walk up to Proto and you could talk to whoever the character is. You could talk to Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump. Imagine he was able to answer those questions. It can extend the movie beyond just what you saw on the screen, but you can actually have a conversation with the characters themselves. Imagine a person beaming in from their kitchen into hundreds of movie theater lobbies around the world for meet and greets, for fan experiences, for selfies. If I knew that my favorite actor, actress is going to be in all these theaters. I will not wait until it comes out on TV at home or I can stream it. I’m going to go to the movie theater and I’m going to have my this is an opportunity for me to have that experience the way movies used to be. So this will bring people back in, keep them there. Of course, the movie theaters will then enjoy all of the benefits of being able to sell merch and popcorn and upsell the people who are there.
About a year ago, not a movie star, but probably one of the biggest pop stars in the world, Olivia Rodrigo, she beamed from New York into a Target in Los Angeles. She materialized in. The place went crazy. Everybody was wearing Olivia Rodrigo merch. They were asking questions. Olivia said afterwards, “Safest I had felt around so many people without my security present in years.” To give her an opportunity to stand and look into her fan’s eyes and spend time with each and every one of them without feeling nervous or scared. There are some abilities that Proto is really successful for. These are moments that fans and their favorite actors or celebrities or musicians or influencers, they can stand face to face in an area that never would have happened if not for this technology being there. So it creates more experiences, but it also brings fans into the locations. We’re seeing a lot of attention in the malls. I believe this is should be in every movie theater lobby. So, we’ll see what happens with that.
You’ve done already some activations with “A Minecraft Movie” and “The Conjuring.”
Hologram Media Network, they are partners of Proto. Right now we’re in dozens and dozens of malls, and through this partnership, they were able to fill the Proto devices with awe inspiring and jaw dropping holographic content specific to “The Conjuring and to “Minecraft.” And before that “Paddington,” and before that “Sonic.” They’re the brainchild of that specific content. Proto is the delivery system. And then they use a third party production company called Pretty Big Monster. We all brainstorm on different ways to create the effects that will be seen by hopefully millions of people. And they produce the content.
You mentioned it’s advertising that doesn’t turn off. Have you been able to track some of these activations, performance-wise?
We have a dashboard of real-time analytics of every single device in every single one of the malls. It’s up to the second, and it goes through demographics. It’s not gonna say you’re you, because we’re SOC 2 and HIPAA compliant. So it’s completely anonymous-facing, but it’ll tell me enough information. So you can actually create specific things that you’re looking for.
How do you see this merging with Hollywood and the film industry? What are your plans for it, and where would you like to see it go in the next five years?
I think in the next five years, we have got to be in every single movie theater lobby. This is a no-brainer. I would love before a movie to be able to talk to the director or a star. I’d like to make it more than me just being a witness to something. I want to be involved. I want to feel like I’m in there. You know, people sit at home with the VR, and they’re involved in it. This is VR without the headset. And Proto allows for people to have, interactive experience, unique experiences that just couldn’t be provided otherwise. I think that’s a no brainer. I think specifically for Hollywood, this allows the star and the fan to have a relationship in a way that is not really available. The stars want to have these relationships. They go on TikTok. They’re trying to do this or answering comments, and they’re trying to show up at all the things.
We actually can do this now. So talk about movies for a second. Imagine one celebrity. Imagine Tom Hanks doing a panel in Japan. He can be dubbed in real time. Asking a question without the need of a translator, him beaming in and able to speaking English here, but speaking in Japanese there.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.