The Wizard of Oz lands in the third millennium thanks to AI and shows the cinema of the future

LAS VEGAS - We are in Las Vegas, city of unruliness, of 'American' events, of special and unique attractions. These undoubtedly include the Sphere, a 'ball' covered on the outside with a huge LED wall that shows animations, colourful characters and advertisements 24 hours a day. Inside is an incredible event arena with a curved wraparound screen that towers above and around the 20,000 spectators it can hold. U2 spent more than five months performing there, amidst incredible sound and visual effects that amazed spectators, but those were trifles. Google Cloud, in fact, announced together with Sphere Studio, Warner Bros. and Magnopus studio that it will bring an updated version of 'The Wizard of Oz', the 1939 classic, to that incredible screen. But how does one bring a 1939 film into 2025? The answer is not just in projecting it 'bigger'. The new version has to be immersive and this involves three major problems. The first is resolution: the details present in the original film are largely insufficient for a decent image on a 15,000 square metre screen. Hence, the AI comes to the rescue and adapts the film's tiny characters to the enormity of the screen using a technique called 'super-resolution'. The second problem is the size of the scenes, with the actors moving against a much smaller background than necessary. Once again, it is a job for the AI that has to take care of recreating everything that is missing around the original frames. If there are only the protagonists in front of a barn door, the new frame will show the entire farm, with the original barn in the middle. The third challenge, the biggest according to the technicians involved, is that of the secondary characters, those who in the original film are framed for a few seconds and then leave, but with the new dimensions they remain visible and not only that: they have to move, to be alive. A huge amount of work is needed here to have a coherent and convincing scene. It will still take weeks for the film to be completed, but the few scenes we have seen are extraordinary: the castle corridor with its high ceilings is marvellous and the wizard's enormous head is one of the most powerful experiences you can think of. But it doesn't end there. What is being done for The Wizard of Oz today to bring it to the Sphere can be done for other films tomorrow to bring them to VR viewers. The path is set and to think of a version of Lord of the Rings in which we visit the great empty halls of the kingdom of Moria is exhilarating.