Neil deGrasse Tyson, Neal Stephenson to Judge XPRIZE's $3.5 Million Sci-Fi Film Competition
Neil deGrasse Tyson, Neal Stephenson, Mira Lane and Rod Roddenberry will judge the Future Vision XPRIZE, a short-film competition asking filmmakers worldwide to imagine a hopeful future. The winner takes home a $2.5 million production budget, and the prize pool totals $3.5 million. XPRIZE announced the judging panel on 14 August 2026, per Variety, following its own press release two days earlier.
Filmmakers have until 15 August to submit a three-minute trailer or short film depicting an optimistic vision of what lies ahead. The entries are not dystopian warnings. They are visions of futures worth building.
The grand prize winner will be named at Moonshots Live, an event on 25 September in Los Angeles. That same evening features pitches from finalists of the Build with Gemini XPRIZE and a $2 million hackathon, alongside the Future Vision XPRIZE awards ceremony, according to Variety.
The money breaks down in layers. The grand prize winner receives $2.5 million in production funding plus $100,000 in cash. Four runners-up each receive $100,000, and ten finalists each receive $10,000. The competition is supported through a partnership with Range Media Partners and Google, the latter participating through its 100 ZEROS initiative, as Variety reported.
The judges bring distinct lenses to that brief. Tyson is an astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Stephenson is the novelist who coined the term "metaverse" in his 1992 book Snow Crash, decades before the word became a corporate buzzword. Lane is vice president and founder of the Envisioning Studio at Google, an AI prototyping lab. Roddenberry is CEO of Roddenberry Entertainment and The Roddenberry Foundation, and the son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.
The Future Vision XPRIZE was put forward by Peter Diamandis, the XPRIZE Foundation, Google and Range, according to the competition's rules page. XPRIZE, founded by Diamandis, runs incentivised prize competitions across science, health and exploration. The idea is simple: set a bold goal, offer real money, and let people race to meet it.
For filmmakers, the attraction is straightforward. A three-minute submission could unlock millions in production funding. The catch is the deadline — entries close 15 August, one day after the judging panel was publicly confirmed by Variety.
What sets this apart from a standard short-film festival is the mandate. The competition does not want the next grim parable about technology gone wrong. It wants futures that feel achievable, even hopeful, and it has assembled a panel spanning astrophysics, speculative fiction, AI development and one of science fiction's most enduring family legacies to decide which visions rise to the top.
