Early Tuesday morning, the Sphere in Las Vegas was hit by a hurricane, or at least a virtual hurricane.
The building’s “Exosphere” swirled with storm clouds, and a digital house appeared when the smoke cleared, with a pair of legs and ruby slippers, 50 feet long and 2 feet high emerging from the Sphere. The stunt is meant to kick off the Sphere’s announcement that it would begin selling tickets to The Wizard of Oz, which will premiere in the venue Aug. 28.
“We thought it was appropriate to start with a stunt that really matches the size and scale of Sphere,” Sphere president and COO Jennifer Koester tells The Hollywood Reporter in an interview. “I think the tornado showing up on the exosphere for our on sale moment is a good representation of what will happen inside the bowl when we think about an immersive experience of the Wizard of Oz.”
As Koester notes, as larger than life as the on sale stunt is, it is merely teeing up the actual Wizard of Oz at the Sphere itself, which is being produced by Sphere Studios, Warner Bros. Discovery, Google (which will contribute its artificial intelligence expertise) and Magnopus, with Academy Award and Emmy-nominee Jane Rosenthal among the producers.
“When you look at the original film, what it did in terms of technology at its time, going into Technicolor, you look at the magic of it, whether it’s the ruby slippers or the tornado scene. So much of what’s in The Wizard of Oz that could naturally fit into an immersive environment like the Sphere,” Rosenthal tells THR in an interview. “What you can do now, when you hear Judy Garland sing ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow,’ it’s a whole different emotional experience.”
Indeed, in a statement, Warner Bros. Discovery film chiefs Michael DeLuca and Pam Abdy note that the original film was an originator in Hollywood technology.
“A technical marvel of its time, the film pushed the boundaries of filmmaking to bring audiences an experience unlike anything they had seen before,” DeLuca and Abdy said. “With The Wizard of Oz at Sphere, audiences will have the chance to see the film adapted into an entirely new and groundbreaking medium that celebrates the wonder and glory of its Technicolor roots.”
Koester and Rosenthal are still mum on many of the specifics of what the experience will entail, but they are willing to tease a bit of what visitors to the Las Vegas attraction can expect.
“Imagine what it would be like to be in a tornado in the Sphere where you’ve got wind coming at you, you’ve got scents coming at you, you’ve got leaves coming at you, your hair is flying all over, you feel as though you are in that tornado with Dorothy, and that’s what it’s all about,” Koester says. “The Wizard of Oz at sphere will be this immersive experience. It’s not a passive viewing experience. You’re not going to watch a movie, you are going to live a movie. You’re going to feel it, to see it, to touch it, to smell it.”
“You’re now in the movie, you’re going down the Yellow Brick road, you’re, fully immersed in it,” Rosenthal says.
And the companies and producers are using AI to help create the experience, with Koester and Rosenthal explaining that they leveraged original archival footage and images from the period to help expand the film from its original 4:3 aspect ratio to the Sphere’s 160,000 sq foot and 16K resolution screen.
“We’re not taking this classic and beloved film and just stretching it out, we’re taking what was originally a four by three, and we are augmenting it using AI,” Koester says, adding that things like Dorothy’s legs, which were cut off in some scenes, can be added back in. “We’ve gone and trained models alongside Google with archival footage about Wizard of Oz, footage from the Academy, the original film materials that represent the true life characters. And we’ve trained the models so that we can use AI to now give Dorothy legs in that image, because we know they were there, but we want them on the screen to fill the media plane.
“When you come to the sphere and you you sit there and you experience Wizard of Oz, everything will be in focus,” Koester added. “When you look over your head, there’ll be poppies in the back that are in focus, because you’re going to be in the perspective of Dorothy and the characters. That’s what’s so unique, and that’s where we’ve used technology to make this experience possible that wouldn’t have been possible without the technology to basically give you the perspective and the feeling of the characters that are in the film. So you feel like you’re in Oz with them. You’re in Emerald City with them. You smell what it’s like to be in Emerald City.”
For Sphere, The Wizard of Oz is also a big bet on the future of experiential entertainment, providing an entirely new experience that complement Postcard From Earth, the nature docuseries.
