To celebrate the final season of Stranger Things, Netflix turned a French streamer into the hero of a film, shot entirely live.
PARIS, Jan. 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- To celebrate the final season of Stranger Things, Netflix created "One Last Adventure," a global experience pulling fans from their living rooms into the show's universe in real time. In France, IDZ delivered one of the most ambitious interpretations: a film performed and broadcasted live, without a single cut, with streamer Joyca stepping into the lead role of an immersive adventure powered by TVU's live production technology.
Filming a Movie Without a Safety Net
An entire building transformed into the Upside Down. Actors improvising in real time. Joyca navigating puzzles as thousands of viewers followed along. A race across Paris by bike to reach a cinema filled with fans—all captured in one continuous shot.
"We wanted this to feel like a film, except it was happening live, across two locations, with no second take," says Filip Trad, the event's director. "Every transition had to be invisible—switching from a dark set to street cameras, handling live interactions, sound, ambient noise, creator mics—without breaking the flow. TVU's cloud solutions gave us seamless continuity. That fluidity changes everything: it keeps the audience fully immersed, connected to the story from start to finish, as if they were part of it."
The project was conceived and produced in collaboration with Netflix, IDZ, Webedia, Filmar, TVU Networks, Gaze, Bim Bam, Publicis Consultants, and The Source.
A New Way for Fans to Experience Stories
"One Last Adventure" shows how live storytelling deepens fan engagement around a fictional universe. More than promotion, it became a shared moment where viewers weren't just watching, but living the adventure with Joyca. Creators are becoming protagonists of stories that brands build with them, live, directly in front of their communities. Livestreaming creates emotion and connection that traditional formats can't match.
Global Impact
Part of Netflix's global fan event series, the Paris story unfolded simultaneously in-cinema and online, where hundreds of thousands watched Joyca live on Twitch and YouTube(watch here). Stranger Things Season 5 accumulated over 105 million views during launch, underscoring the massive global community around the show.
Discover more: netflix.com/tudum/features/stranger-things-5-events
** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **
When Cinema Goes Live: Netflix Storytelling Brought to Life by IDZ, Joyca, and TVU Networks
SINGAPORE, Jan. 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- At CES 2026 in Las Vegas, Sharpa's newly debuted full body robot, North, played fully autonomous ping-pong rallies with human opponents, drawing crowds that cheered as the volleys continued. For four straight days—eight hours a day—Sharpa opted for a live game rather than a scripted showcase. Sharpa also introduced CraftNet, an end-to-end hierarchical VTLA (vision–tactile–language–action) model designed to advance fine manipulation. Together, these milestones underscore Sharpa's integrated hardware, software, and AI capabilities. For Sharpa, AI robotics is a mission to return people's time back to us, as they put:
"We manufacture time by making robots useful."
In May 2025, Sharpa introduced Wave, a dexterous robotic hand with 22 active degrees of freedom, 1:1 human scale and a proprietary dynamic tactile array. Wave entered mass production and began shipping in October 2025. At CES, North demonstrated advanced fine manipulation capabilities powered by Wave, completed four fully autonomous demonstrations: robot photography, ping-pong rallying, windmill assembly, and card dealing, showcasing precise and consistent performance.
Throughout the show, Sharpa ran live sessions for eight hours each day and maintained strong on-site engagement. North captured more than 2,000 instant photos and assembled more than 300 windmills. The windmill task, in particular, stood out for its long-horizon autonomy, requiring more than 30 consecutive successful steps to complete. This is one of the longest-horizon tasks ever demonstrated for fully autonomous manipulation. The demonstrations quickly spread across social media and drew huge attention from robotics practitioners. Sharpa expects to release the production version of North in mid-2026.
"Robots can already dance and backflip, but manipulation remains the real bottleneck for useful, autonomous robots," said Alicia Veneziani, Sharpa's Global VP of GTM and President of Europe. "At Sharpa, we focus on productivity from day one, which is why we started with the hardest part, the hand."
"Tactileless is the new blindness"
Sharpa also introduced CraftNet. Built on Sharpa's multi-system manipulation architecture, which mimics the human system of reflexes and higher functions, CraftNet combines two complementary layers for reliable fine manipulation: System 0, the Interaction Brain, and System 1, the Motion Brain, to optimize "last-millimeter" interaction. It quickly became a standout topic, because it is critical to whether a robot can move from impressive demos to reliable work. Sharpa will share updates on CraftNet in phases.
"Last millimeter is 90% of the challenge"
Collectively, both CraftNet and North reflect Sharpa's integrated hardware-and-software approach to scalable autonomous manipulation, which is a breakthrough for real-world deployment. Sharpa sees expanding opportunities across retail, restaurants, and hotels, and ultimately the home, where robots can move beyond novelty and begin taking on meaningful work in everyday settings. By enabling robots powered by CraftNet to take on repetitive, tedious, and sometimes dangerous work, every manual task they assume becomes a deposit into humanity's "time bank." In this way, Sharpa fulfills its mission as a manufacturer of time—by making robots truly useful.
Sharpa was co-founded by Shaoqing Xiang, David Li, and Kai Sun. The company employs more than 100 people globally, with backgrounds spanning leading AI, autonomous driving, and robotics companies.
About Sharpa
Founded in 2024, Sharpa is an AI robotics company focused on building ultra-high-performance robots and core components for future general-purpose robotic applications. Sharpa's mission is to manufacture time by making robots useful.
Sharpa's global headquarters and R&D are based in Singapore, with a business operation center in Mountain View, USA, and its manufacturing R&D center in Shanghai, China.
** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **
Sharpa Aims to "Manufacture Time" via Its CraftNet VTLA Model, and Stuns CES 2026 with Live Autonomous Demos for Fine Manipulation
