The Wizard Of Oz Is Poised To Become One Of 2025's Biggest Movies Thanks To One Location

For a while now, it's been clear that the future of moviegoing has to be bigger in order to compete. IMAX screens are more important than they've ever been, which, in turn, has made premium format competitors such as Dolby Cinema more essential than they've ever been. But the Sphere in Las Vegas has taken premium moviegoing to a new level with its recent rollout of "The Wizard of Oz," with the enterprise becoming a massive financial success in the early going.

As reported by Bloomberg, the Sphere's presentation of the 1939 cinematic classic has been selling between 4,000 and 5,000 tickets per showing, with "The Wizard of Oz" itself being shown two to three days a day. What's more, those tickets cost almost $200 each, which is more than 10 times the average movie ticket price (even in more expensive cities). Do the math and that means the movie is generating nearly $2 million per day from a single venue. That is downright unheard of. Until now, that is.

The Sphere is the brainchild of billionaire James Dolan, who serves as the executive chairman and chief executive officer of Sphere Entertainment Co. For those who may not be familiar, the Sphere is billed as a "next-generation entertainment medium." More specifically, it's, as its name suggests, a gigantic spherical venue with immersive video and audio that includes a 16K wraparound LED screen. The whole thing is, as of right now, a one-of-a-kind experience.

Dolan is licensing the rights to "The Wizard of Oz" from Warner Bros. and has invested $100 million in adapting the film for the venue. That included, among other things, a great deal of help from generative AI, including replacing two of the Munchkin faces with those of himself and Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav. Of course, there's been a lot of criticism of the way the venue is using AI to alter such an important piece of cinema history, and understandably so. All the same, it's working, and the venture could potentially generate hundreds of millions in the coming months/years.

"We'll run 'The Wizard of Oz' forever," Dolan recently said on a call with analysts before adding, "It's hard for me to imagine a better product than 'Wizard of Oz.'"

We've seen many, many times that re-releases of classics can do very well, even in average movie theaters. Just earlier this year, in fact, "Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith" became a sizable hit upon returning to the big screen for its 20th anniversary. But what the Sphere offers is something truly unique, even for a movie someone might have seen a dozen times. Dolan is right to believe that the venue can show "The Wizard of Oz" indefinitely. But the bigger picture is only just now coming into focus. This is about much more than a single, classic film.

The report notes that Dolan has been in talks with studios about doing something similar for other movies, including WB regarding the "Harry Potter" films and even Disney with respect to the "Star Wars" movies. The latter wants a little more control over the process, so those discussions haven't gone anywhere, at least not yet. But it seems inevitable that other studios will happily cash in at a time when the global box office is more unpredictable than it's ever been. If Dolan and the Sphere folks are the ones investing the resources into the production, what does Hollywood have to lose? It could be looked at as free money — and a lot of it, too.

Dolan and his team are also planning on opening several more Sphere locations around the world, some of them smaller, which would mean even more money. Indeed, this entire operation could be a big moneymaker for the right movies in the future. There is, however, both good and bad in that. On the one hand, studios could use reliable revenue streams, and anything that gets people excited about going to see a movie is probably a net positive. But it gets muddy if Dolan and Co. want to start using a bunch of sloppy AI to make, say, the "Star Wars" films work at the Sphere. If studios can avoid letting that happen, then there's reason to be optimistic. Though, at the moment, that is a big "if."