KISS retired from touring with a final show at Madison Square Garden in December 2023 but announced plans to transition into a digital era. Gene Simmons recently shared details about the band’s upcoming avatar project during a chat with Backstage Pass Rock-News:
“Well, I will say that it’s beyond anything anybody’s ever seen. Yours truly included. You can go on ‘YouTube’ or ‘Smootube’ or whatever other buttons you like to push and put in ‘KISS avatars’, and you’ll get just a taste of it although it’s like drawing a skyscraper. You just get a sense of what it is, but when you actually see the skyscraper, it’s amazing. Or it’s like seeing a ‘Godzilla’ comic book as opposed to real ‘Godzilla’ walking down the street 50-stories-tall.”
He added:
“So, you’ll get a sense of that, but that’s about all I’m gonna say about it, except that they’re gonna be a few hundred million dollars spent in making sure that people’s jaws will drop.”
$200 Million For The Virtual KISS
KISS teamed up with Pophouse and George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic company for their avatars and invested $200 million on the project. Simmons revealed the cost during a fan meeting last year by saying:
“There’s so much being planned, even beyond my comprehension. But they’re spending—oh, about 200 million [dollars]—to take it to the next level.”
He also reflected on similar hologram shows like Michael Jackson in Las Vegas and ABBA in London. The singer said of the 3D models:
“You can’t tell if they’re there, right there, like that.”
The Band’s Avatar Shows Will Be Different
KISS received backlash from some fans over the new avatar shows after the first announcement. Paul Stanley responded to the criticism by saying their plans were beyond regular tours. He told ‘The Allison Hagendorf Show’:
“We wanna create something that’s a go-to and a must-see for everybody. KISS fans will love it, but other people who could care less about KISS will wanna see it. It’s going to be mind-boggling.”
The singer detailed:
“It’s KISS and Cirque du Soleil and everything you can imagine on steroids. But it will really cross that bridge of what’s real and what’s not, and combine the two… It will be incredible.”
The 3D KISS models will have fantasy-like elements such as breathing fire and shooting electricity. The shows will kick off in 2027.