The End of the Road tour ended. Kiss didn’t. On December 2, 2023, Madison Square Garden witnessed something genuinely strange: four flesh-and-blood musicians stepped back during the encore and handed the stage to digital versions of themselves. Tommy Thayer describes what comes next as “basically a virtual Kiss show” that will be “mind-boggling,” with surprises that aim to exceed anything earlier avatar productions have delivered. The projected launch is 2028. Details beyond that remain sparse — but the machinery building it is anything but small.
Beyond ABBA Voyage: When Star Wars Tech Meets the Demon
Pophouse Entertainment and Industrial Light & Magic are combining forces to push avatar performance well past the benchmark ABBA Voyage established.
Pophouse Entertainment — the Swedish company involved in developing ABBA Voyage — is co-producing the Kiss project alongside Industrial Light & Magic. That’s your clearest reference point, and also your first signal that this runs deeper than a nostalgia trip. Pophouse didn’t bring in a standard concert-production vendor to build the avatars. They partnered with ILM, the George Lucas-founded effects house that has shaped visual-effects filmmaking for decades.
Here’s what’s confirmed so far:
- Pophouse Entertainment, a company behind ABBA Voyage, is co-producing the project
- Industrial Light & Magic is building the avatars using performance-capture and visual-effects technology
- The 2023 MSG preview presented the avatars as fantasy-based superheroes — idealized, larger-than-life versions rather than straightforward digital copies
- Projected launch is 2028; venue, format, and final title remain unconfirmed
- Gene Simmons has reportedly confirmed new Kiss music exists; how it integrates with the show remains unclear
That superhero framing matters. Kiss has spent roughly five decades building four characters — the Demon, Starchild, Catman, Spaceman — into full-blown mythology. According to available reporting, ILM is crafting idealized, superhuman versions of those personas, not simply rendering the musicians as they appear today.
New Music, No Retirement
Gene Simmons’ reported confirmation of new recorded material reframes this project as continuation, not conclusion.
Simmons has reportedly said that new Kiss music has been recorded, with the avatar production continuing toward its projected 2028 release. Whether those recordings release separately, feed directly into the show, or both remains unresolved based on available reporting. What’s clear is the intent: Pophouse has framed digital performance as the mechanism that lets Kiss reach fans for decades without the physical constraints of touring. According to Pophouse’s announcement, Kiss would become the first U.S. band to go fully virtual.
Format specifics — straight concert, rock opera, narrative adventure — remain unresolved. Thayer’s “great surprises” reflects creative intent, not a confirmed attraction list. Treat it accordingly, but don’t dismiss it either. According to Pollstar and Billboard’s ongoing coverage of the live-entertainment tech sector, ILM-caliber production involvement in a touring-music context is genuinely without direct precedent.
Rock built its identity on sweat, unpredictability, and bodies in rooms. The real question isn’t whether Kiss can pull this off. It’s whether a perfectly rendered Demon breathing digital fire carries the same charge as the real thing — and whether anyone standing in that crowd will care about the difference.
