With fantastic re-engineered effects, the Sphere in Las Vegas premiered the 1939 film Wizard of Oz in August 2025. And from the beginning, with the use of AI, the Sphere’s enormous screen has been an immersive multi-sensory journey that transports the audience from Kansas to Oz.
Hang on tight to your hat. The very same tornado that carries Dorothy and Toto to Oz endeavors to pick the audience up and transport them alongside the big screen travelers. There is atmospheric fog with towering bursts of fire, while dew, tree leaves and apples descent.
With more than a thousand speakers directing sound, the original film score has rich new clarity. Thunder and lightning are realistic. Seats move and hidden fans blow air during the tornado scenes.
The audience is taken by surprise even when knowing the storm is coming.
As Dorothy and Toto set out on the Yellow Brick Road they discover it wraps around beautiful farm country, quilted by corn stalks and rail fences. When they chance upon the Scarecrow, the Tinman and the Lion, the travelers come upon an assortment of happenings.
Arriving at an apple orchard the visitors shakeup the fruit laden trees. Foam apples drop in anger, in another scene as autumn arrives. A brisk breeze rustles the leaves in the trees bringing them down upon the audience.
Further along there is no doubt that spring has sprung. Rows of multicolored flowers stretch toward the horizon, but the flowers lie beneath a powdered blanket of springtime snow and dew-like moisture falls.
It is not easy to describe the AI reimaging with justice, but truly the Wizard of Oz at the Sphere is a grand experience and the performance certainly lives up to the pomp.
Perhaps you have witnessed something in your life that cannot be described with the right words – this is the case with the Wizard of Oz at the Sphere.
Mile by mile, the Yellow Brick Road gives way to the Emerald City. The road to the Emerald City casts its spell upon Las Vegas by storm!
