Selena Hologram to Release New Music, Tour

Tejano pop star Selena Quintanilla — known simply as Selena — will be the latest deceased musician to be resurrected as a hologram. The singer’s family gave confirmation of the expensive tribute to Billboard following an announcement on Selena’s official Facebook page.

The hologram will be known as “Selena The One” and is being billed as a “walking, talking, singing, and dancing, digital embodiment” of the star. An official site has already been launched while an IndieGoGo campaign will go live on April 16th in an effort to raise $500,000.

Independent tech company Acrovirt LLC will build the hologram. The Nevada-based company specializes in “Digitized Human Essence,” creating a hologram that will “autonomously learn and react on behalf of its human counterpart.” This “digitized essence,” according to the Facebook post, “will release new songs and videos, will collaborate with current hit artists and aims to go on tour in 2018.”

Selena’s family is fully in support of the holographic experience of the late singer, having been publicly exploring similar options for the past couple of years. Her father Abraham spoke with the Associated Press last year about the unexpected difficulties with finding the perfect company to partner with for the project, citing the price of a hologram as the biggest difficulty. The Quintanilla family had originally looked to AV Concepts, the company behind the Tupac hologram from 2012’s Coachella. “We all decided that it wasn’t enough for the fans,” explained Selena’s brother A.B. to AP. “She looked like a ghost. The image was not well-defined.”

Selena was killed by the president of her fan club, Yolanda Saldivar, in March 1995 at the age of 23. Saldivar is currently serving life in prison. The singer’s life and murder were famously chronicled in the 1997 film Selena, which starred Jennifer Lopez in her breakthrough role.