Playing the titular role, MSG CEO James Dolan opened The Wizard of Oz at Sphere Thursday night. Famously, the Wizard is a charlatan in every version of the text. In the books and 1939 film, he’s relatively harmless. In Wicked, he’s basically a fascist. But in Las Vegas, where spectacle-over-substance is kind of the whole point, the Wizard was a beneficent showman. Kind of like James Franco in Oz the Great and Powerful?
The Wizard of Oz at Sphere is the latest Contrabulus Fabtraption MSG has put on in their Vegas orb. It is a “reimagining” of the 1939 MGM film starring Judy Garland.
So it’s the movie, but bigger?
Yes and no. MSG, Google Cloud, Warner Bros. Discovery, and VFX studio Magnopus upscaled The Wizard of Oz to 16K and used generative AI to fill the frame. Because there’s so much more frame to fill with a near-360 screen. The film also cuts 20 minutes out of the runtime, but adds 4DX-style elements to the show, like a wind effect during the tornado scene.
And how much of this is AI?
According to Google, AI was used to “enhance the film’s resolution, extend backgrounds, and digitally recreate existing characters who would otherwise not appear on the same screen.” So instead of how the film would cut to Dorothy, then the Scarecrow, then back to Dorothy, it now keeps everybody on the same giant frame. That’s right, we’re doing long-ass oners in this version of The Wizard of Oz. And AI was used to insert James Dolan and David Zaslav into the movie.
Wait, who got added in the background?
MSG Entertainment and Warner Bros. Discovery CEOs James L. Dolan and David Zaslav were digitally inserted into the background of The Wizard of Oz at Sphere. “I won’t tell you where, it’s only for like two seconds,” Dolan said at the premiere. “[They] replaced the faces of two very short, two-second characters in the movie with mine and David. I challenge you to find it.” Going from Dolan’s hint, we’re guessing the VFX team took the faces off two little people actors. Cool! VFX specialst Ben Grossman added that the two actors were “too blurry to be identified.”
How successful is The Wizard of Oz at Sphere?
Critically, the reviews are mixed. Salon called it “an atrocity.” USA Today said people worried about the use of AI should “shelve” their “protestations” until they see the film themselves. The site also featured a beta testing “Deeper Dive” AI feature that could tell readers all about “ethical AI.” Variety was somewhere over the rainbow in the middle, saying the spectacle was spectacular but the AI was kind of ghoulish, especially when it “was used to replace Judy Garland’s face with a poreless plastic sheen (where film grain and delicate lighting gave her skin a certain softness before). Dorothy’s once-glistening eyes now look almost cow-like, framed by fine CG eyelashes.”
Financially, it had better be really freaking successful. Dolan told The Hollywood Reporter “We went way over the budget. What we were originally thinking, we ended up almost two times what we were originally thinking. We’re getting up pretty close to that $100 million mark.” MSG plans to play the film at Spheres across the globe for at least a decade. In fairness, it took the OG Wizard of Oz a long time to make its money back, too.
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