AI-reimagined Wizard of Oz debuts at Sphere Las Vegas amid backlash

The Wizard of Oz has been reworked with artificial intelligence for a site specific, immersive presentation at the Sphere in Las Vegas, debuting Thursday night and already drawing both fascination and fierce criticism. Sphere Entertainment, in partnership with Warner Bros. and technology partners, reconfigured the 1939 musical to fill the venue's 160,000 square foot, wraparound LED screen and to pair visuals with wind, haptics and a 167,000 speaker sound system, producers and executives said.

The production team said the venue's unprecedented scale required a fundamental rethink of the film's frame and sound. Jane Rosenthal, a producer on the project, said the original movie's narrow aspect ratio and studio system origins made it a viable candidate for experimentation. Visual effects lead Ben Grossmann, who oversaw the adaptation, said AI models trained on archival material were used to generate or enhance performances and to reconstruct faces and textures at the Sphere's 16K resolution. Grossmann said the team tested the AI for two years and that the models were fine tuned exclusively on original material to preserve what they called the integrity of the performances.