One of the most influential studios in immersive storytelling appears to have reached the end of a major chapter. Several employees of Felix & Paul Studios announced on LinkedIn this August 19 that the Montreal-based company had closed its doors, with a significant number of team members simultaneously declaring themselves open to work – First reported by Ian Hamilton on Good Virtual Reality.
No official statement from the company or its founders has been published at the time of writing, and the exact circumstances surrounding the closure remain unclear. But several messages shared publicly by employees now explicitly refer to the company’s closure rather than a restructuring or isolated round of layoffs.
Technical Art Director Alexis Morin wrote that Felix & Paul Studios had “close[d] its doors” and left the entire team looking for work. Project manager and producer Jazmine Darragh similarly described her departure as an “unexpected close following the company’s closure.” Other long-standing employees, including senior figures across technology, Unreal Engine and production, have announced their departures over the past 24 hours.
Cover: MIYUBI
A Studio That Helped Define Cinematic VR
Founded in Montreal in 2013 by Félix Lajeunesse, Paul Raphaël and Stéphane Rituit, Felix & Paul Studios has occupied a distinctive position in the development of virtual reality. The company emerged during the first major wave of contemporary VR, developing a cinematic language around stereoscopic 360-degree filmmaking at a time when both the technology and its grammar were still being invented.
Early projects such as STRANGERS WITH PATRICK WATSON and MIYUBI, alongside collaborations with Cirque du Soleil, helped establish the studio internationally. Felix & Paul later worked with some of the world’s most recognisable organisations and personalities, from NASA and the International Space Station to former US President Barack Obama.
Its most ambitious project, SPACE EXPLORERS: THE ISS EXPERIENCE, was filmed aboard the International Space Station over several years. The material subsequently became central to THE INFINITE, the large-scale immersive exhibition developed with PHI Studio that has toured internationally.
The studio continued moving toward location-based entertainment with INTERSTELLAR ARC, an ambitious multiplayer immersive experience launched at AREA15 in Las Vegas in 2025.
An Uncertain Moment For The Team — And Its Work
What happens next remains unclear. The public messages do not provide details about the company’s intellectual property, existing partnerships or the future operation of experiences currently presented to audiences. A company closure does not necessarily mean that its catalogue or ongoing location-based projects will disappear with it.
For now, the most immediate consequence concerns the people behind these productions. The wave of messages appearing on LinkedIn reveals the breadth of a team spanning real-time development, technical art, 3D production, VFX, Unreal Engine, production management and immersive filmmaking.
It also makes the news particularly significant for the immersive sector. Felix & Paul Studios was not simply a production company operating within VR: it was one of a small number of studios that participated in defining the medium during its formative years and subsequently attempted to translate that expertise into larger, public-facing experiences.
XRMust has contacted Felix & Paul Studios for confirmation and further details. We will update this article when more information becomes available.
