120 Thousand Fans Off to See ‘The Wizard of Oz’ at Vegas Sphere

Posted on: August 13, 2025, 01:06h. 

Last updated on: August 13, 2025, 02:25h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Vegas Myths Busted.
  • The Las Vegas Sphere reports selling 120K tickets for its re-envisioned “The Wizard of Oz”
  • It expects to sell 200K by the movie’s opening day, August 28
  • Though that’s a lot of tickets, it’s not enough to fill the venue 11 times

More than 120K tickets have been sold for a reimagined “The Wizard of Oz” at the Las Vegas Sphere since they went on sale on June 10. And James Dolan, CEO of parent company Sphere Entertainment, says 200K are expected to sell, starting at $100 each, by the time the movie opens on August 28.

This photo was created by prompting an AI program to “render a photo of Dorothy following the yellow brick road off the Sphere’s screen and into the audience.” (Image: GROK)

“We’re very proud of the product, and we think it’s groundbreaking,” Dolan said during Sphere Entertainment’s earnings call Monday. “We think that it’s going to draw a lot of attention and that people who come to Vegas are going to want to go.”

Dolan said, “The Wizard of Oz” may increase the rate of Las Vegas visitors attending the Sphere from 7% to above 10%. (Translating: 7% of Las Vegas’ 42 million visitors is 2.9 million, while 10% is 4.2 million.)

The movie employed AI to completely re-render the 1939 cinematic classic, eliminating most close-ups and “outpainting” nearly every scene to fill its 160K square foot digital screen with actors and objects that originally lurked outside the camera’s frame. (While the original relied heavily on close-ups for emotional resonance, the Sphere’s version prioritizes spatial immersion, making it feel more like a stage play in 4D.)

For the audio, which will emanate from 167K state-of-the-art speakers, the actors’ voices were isolated from the soundtrack, sonically improved, and then paired with re-recorded orchestral performances.

And the effects include wind effects and fragrances designed to pull the audience into key scenes — especially the tornado, during which 12-foot-tall fans whip up fog, leaves, hay, and debris that envelop the audience.

Haptic technology — designed to rumble with the tornado, the opening of Oz’s gates, and the fluttering of the flying monkeys — will also enhance the experience, but only for about 10K of the Sphere’s 18,600 seats. Those seats are in the 200 and 300 levels, not the 400 (highest) level.

Sphere’s Spin

To promote the movie, this outdoor installation is currently on display for photo ops, suggesting that the Sphere has landed atop the Wicked Witch of the East. (Image: Sphere)

Assuming expectations are met and 200K tickets do sell before opening day, that’s not even enough to completely fill the globular wonder 11 times, and 465 screenings are currently for sale on Ticketmaster.

Another way to look at the news is that only 200K out of 8.65 million available tickets are expected to sell by opening day.

The film cost the Sphere $80 million to produce and license, which Dolan characterized on the earnings call as “not an inexpensive project.”

Sphere Entertainment reported second-quarter revenue below expectations of the analysts polled by FactSet, though its adjusted operating income was more than double the amount seen in last year’s second quarter.