Vegas Sphere to Pay $80M to Bring Dorothy Home

Posted on: August 5, 2024, 09:24h. 

Last updated on: August 6, 2024, 09:13h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas.

James Dolan, CEO of Sphere Entertainment, is about to pay more than anyone else in history for a movie ticket.

AI envisions how Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz” would look projected on the outside of the Vegas Sphere. (Image: Chat GPT)

According to the New York Post, Dolan is nearing the end of negotiations that will allow him to pay $80 million to adopt “The Wizard of Oz” to the Sphere, which contains the largest movie screen ever built. This officially confirms a scoop first broken by Casino.org‘s own Vital Vegas on June 5.

For perspective, the original film cost $2.7 million to shoot 85 years ago — still only about $25 million accounting for inflation.

Dolan is negotiating with Warner Bros. Discovery, which now owns “The Wizard of Oz.” About 15 years ago, the movie studio purchased the rights to the Oscar-winning 1939 classic starring Judy Garland — in addition to all other MGM productions made before 1986 — in a merger with a $43 billion price tag.

What’s expected to result is an 80-minute trip down the yellow brick road, lopping about 20 minutes out of the original film, but adding in cutting-edge visual effects and haptic seat immersion.

Perhaps there will even be flying monkeys. We can hope, can’t we?

According to The Post, work hasn’t yet begun on the project at the Little Sphere prototype in Burbank, Calif., so this is still probably several months to a year off.

That means, “Postcard from Earth,” the 55-minute sci-fi plea for environmentalism shot by director Darren Aronofsky, will be seeming really old by then. The movie still runs three times a day since premiering along with the spherical venue in September 2023, with every ticket costing $114.

And that’s without the massive interest sure to be generated by anything new involving Dorothy, Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, Scarecrow, and Toto. (You thought we would forget Toto, didn’t you?)

According to a source quoted by The Post, Warner Brothers Discovery will collect 5% of the gross profit from showing the film.