"Last week, I trudged through the Strip's endless construction and a labyrinthine parking lot to have my first experience of Sphere. Sphere-just Sphere, no definite article-is owned by Sphere Entertainment, a holding company of the Dolan family (see: HBO, AMC, Radio City Music Hall, MSG Sports), which used to be called Madison Square Garden Entertainment, which itself was spun off from the Madison Square Garden Company."
"Sphere has been open since September 2023, but even as a local I've avoided it, because even by the standards of 21st-century Vegas, it looks and sounds stupid. Everyone has their limit. I pushed past mine because I had heard about the supposed revival of one of American cinema's seminal achievements: The Wizard of Oz. A team of engineers and digital artists, gathered at the behest of Sphere's owners, have spent two years working on a new version."
A visit to Sphere required trudging through the Strip's construction and a labyrinthine parking lot. Sphere is owned by Sphere Entertainment, a Dolan family holding company spun out of Madison Square Garden Entertainment. Sphere opened in September 2023 but presents an off-putting look and sound even to locals. Engineers and digital artists spent two years adapting The Wizard of Oz to Sphere's 160,000-square-foot LED screen. Projecting a 1939 rectangular film onto a spherical display would leave massive dead space, so the team digitally extended sets, used AI to upscale resolution and generate background extras, cut thirty minutes, and added 4D effects. Standard admission starts at $139 for a nosebleed seat at the apex of a steep seating gallery. The atrium inside Sphere features a curved, undulating shape.
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