By: Nick Gambino
The Wizard of Oz is coming to the Sphere in Las Vegas as an immersive experience largely enhanced by AI.
The Sphere has been turning heads since it was unveiled near the Las Vegas Strip in 2023. The Sphere is a music and entertainment venue that boasts 17,600 seats inside a spherical structure fitted with a massive wraparound, extremely high-res LED screen.
This unique cutting-edge venue allows a ton of immersive opportunities. Its maiden voyage kicked off with a U2 residency that saw the Irish band utilizing the screen to create immersive imagery all around while they performed.
Now it’s been announced that the Sphere at the Venetian Resort is partnering with Warner Bros. Discovery, Google and Magnopus to present a reimagining of the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz starring Judy Garland. As the original movie was a technological marvel of its day, so will be this new version.
The immersive movie experience will premiere on August 28th. Google Cloud is using AI to significantly upscale the 86-year-old movie so that it takes full advantage of the 16K panels. But it’s not just about sharpening the image.
The coalition of tech companies have come together to create a never-before-seen experience that allows those in attendance to feel as if they are right there, immersed in the land of Oz (and of course Kansas). As part of that they will be using generative AI to create whole new images. This is necessary for the movie to properly play across the wraparound screen without having to repeat or stretch the image.
For example, there’s a scene in Kansas where Dorothy is talking to Auntie Em and Miss Gulch (played by the incomparable Margaret Hamilton who also played the Wicked Witch of the West). Also present in the scene is Uncle Henry. In many of the shots, Uncle Henry is off camera but present in the room. The Wizard of Oz at Sphere uses generative AI to show the entire room, including Uncle Henry as he listens to them speak. This gives a more 3-dimensional aspect to the movie that allows it to fully leverage the 160,000-foot wraparound screen.
They hae fed as much information into their generative AI models as they can to help generate new images to enhance 90% of the movie. This includes still photographs, production illustrations, musical scores and the screenplay.
We’ll have to see how the movie is received when it premieres in August. That will tell us if we’ll see more of these immersive versions of our favorite movies in the future.
