Following an announcement last week that Sphere Entertainment was creating an immersive version of The Wizard of Oz for its unique Las Vegas venue, we now have more details on how companies like Google and Magnopus are using AI to enhance the 86-year-old film to fill the Sphere’s massive 160,000-square-foot semi-spherical screen.
But a collaboration between Google’s Cloud and DeepMind research divisions didn’t only rely on off-the-shelf AI-upscaling techniques to create a new version of The Wizard of Oz with enough resolution for the Sphere’s 16,000 pixel by 16,000 pixel screen. The team at Google used “fine-tuned Gemini models, Veo 2, and Imagen 3 to intelligently enhance the film’s resolution, extend backgrounds, and digitally recreate existing characters who would otherwise not appear on the same screen.”
To make audiences feel more immersed as if they were part of the movie, scenes that originally cut back and forth between characters due to framing limitations now feature all the characters on screen at the same time for extended periods. “…In one early scene, Dorothy is seen talking to Aunt Em and Miss Gulch. Audiences know Uncle Henry is in the room, although off camera. In the version that will play in the Sphere, Uncle Henry is visible, along with a much wider background shot showing more of the house,” according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
To improve the performance of the AI models used to enhance and extend the original film, Google’s team used more than just old additional footage. By searching through Warner Bros.’ archives they were able to find additional materials like shooting scripts, photographs, production illustrations, and set plans that were “uploaded to Veo and Gemini so the models can train on specific details of the original characters, their environments and even elements of the production, like camera focal lengths for specific scenes.” These additional materials also helped define the behaviors of digitally added characters who did not appear in some scenes in the original version of the film.
“Al has touched over 90% of the movie,” Ravi Rajamani, managing director, global head of generative Al engineering at Google Cloud, told the Wall Street Journal. But according to James Dolan, executive chairman and chief executive of Sphere Entertainment, there will potentially be other sensory elements – such as heat, wind, and scents – which are still under wraps, that audiences will experience when The Wizard of Oz debuts at the Sphere starting on August 28th, 2025.
