Hollywood Legend Steve McQueen Honored as 'King of Cool' in New NFT Collection
Steve McQueen is racing into Web3 through a new non-fungible token (NFT) collection honoring his love of motorcycles and his reputation for being the "king of cool."
On July 14, the McQueen Estate – in partnership with Web3 talent agency Verified Labs, contemporary artist Michael Kalish, Triumph Motorcycles and Web3 animation studio Immersive Entertainment Laboratories (IEL) – will release a collection of 1,000 generative art collectibles with varying rarity traits remembering the late actor. Sold on the ThetaDrop platform, the project was inspired by an original portrait Kalish created of McQueen in 2022 with help from McQueen's grandson, Chase.
Collectors of the “King of Cool Racing Team” NFTs will receive a digital motorcycle shipping crate that they can pry open to reveal a one-of-a-kind, virtual Triumph Bonneville T100 Motorcycle. Revealing the bike will grant them membership into the King of Cool Racing Team and provide them with access to future token-gated content, events and games. Each collectible also comes with a 3D Steve McQueen portrait, which can be viewed in even greater detail using a virtual reality headset or Sony's Spatial Reality Display.
McQueen, who was known for his starring roles in movies like "The Cincinnati Kid," "The Magnificent Seven" and "The Towering Inferno," was also an avid motorcycle enthusiast. He participated in a number of races and collected many Triumph motorcycles and hot rods in his personal garage in Palm Springs, California.
Justin Winters, co-founder and CEO of Verified Labs, told CoinDesk that Chase, who runs McQueen Racing with his father Chad, wanted to memorialize the movie star in a new format.
