The Las Vegas Sphere has debuted its reimagined version of The Wizard of Oz unlike anything audiences have seen—or felt—before.
Snag your tickets to The Wizard of Oz at Sphere on StubHub.
Opened on Thursday, Aug. 28, the groundbreaking production bleds the 1939 film’s restored, high-definition visuals with newly re-recorded music and immersive, real-world effects that surround and physically engage the audience inside the 17,500-seat, 160,000-square-foot LED dome.
While The Sphere has already hosted massive musical residencies and the nature-based film Postcard From Earth, The Wizard of Oz marks the venue’s first full-scale cinematic overhaul—one that expands storytelling beyond the screen and into the air, fog, and heat of the physical space itself.
Glenn Derry, executive VP of MSG Ventures and the tech lead behind the experience, described the production as incorporating multi-sensory effects “at a scale that I don’t think anyone else has done before” in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
Those effects include 12-foot-tall fans, fog, swirling haze, and even real leaves blowing through the venue during the Kansas twister scene. “I wanted it to feel massive,” Derry told THR. “We have 13 million cubic feet of air in the Sphere.”
Once Dorothy arrives in Oz, guests won’t just see flames on the screen when the Wizard appears—they’ll feel the heat from them. And when the Wicked Witch sends out her infamous flying monkeys, Derry says his team found a way to create actual winged creatures that will fly over the audience’s heads.
“[They] come at you from above and beyond,” he told THR, describing a system that allows the creatures to move through the venue’s massive volume.
The Sphere partnered with Warner Bros. Discovery, Google, and Magnopus to develop the experience. Google contributed artificial intelligence technology to help enhance the film visually and technically. According to Derry, specific moments—like flying monkeys and the tornado—were non-negotiables from Sphere chairman James Dolan, who originally conceived the venue.
“There were some things that our chairman was just dead set on,” Derry told The Hollywood Reporter. “The tornado was one of them. Our Winged Monkeys was another.”
The production is expected to push the boundaries of what cinema can be—melding classic film with immersive theater and theme park–style effects, all under one digital dome in the heart of Las Vegas.
The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere began its run Thursday, Aug. 28. Get your tickets at StubHub.
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