The AI magic behind Sphere's upcoming 'The Wizard of Oz' experience

Summary

“The Wizard of Oz” may not be the first film shot in color, but many people remember it that way because of how director Victor Fleming cleverly used black-and-white film for the scenes set in Kansas.Likewise, “The Wizard of Oz” may not be the first film to be reconceptualized with AI, but it may soon be known for that, too.For months, thousands of researchers, programmers, visual effects artists, archivists and producers at Google DeepMind, Google Cloud, Sphere Studios, Magnopus, Warner Bros. Discovery and others in the film and technology industries have been working to bring the 1939 classic to a very big screen in a very big way.On August 28, their work will debut at Sphere, the colossal Las Vegas venue that has been pioneering new forms of entertainment since it opened in September 2023. Now, generative AI will take center stage, alongside Dorothy, Toto and more munchkins than could ever fit in a multiplex.It’s fitting that a work that once broke cinematic boundaries will do so again. “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere” is an equally epic undertaking of creativity and technology, where the story will envelop the venue’s 17,600-seat spherical space to create an immersive sensory experience.Even a few years ago, such an undertaking would have been nearly impossible with conventional CGI. It’s really only become possible through the latest advances in generative AI media models, specifically Imagen and Veo, with Gemini also playing a major role. Not only does the team need to create an all-encompassing experience, but they also must do so with only the original material. Not a line of new dialogue was added nor a note of new music was sung in enriching this classic for Sphere.“We talked about doing it in different ways,” says Jane Rosenthal, the Academy and Emmy Award-nominated producer who is a producer on “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere.” “We realized that we really needed to do it with AI.”The wonderful wizardsNot that the team can simply enter a few AI prompts, click the...