Pre-release On May 28, 2025, Rosenthal believed that if
The Wizard of Oz proves to be a success at Sphere, that it could lead to more immersive versions of other films being screened at the venue, saying: "It's a template for our industry ... a way for us to go back and look at films through the eyes of the director and the time in which they were made. We hope to do other films, but we don't know what those are." On July 27, 2025, Lorna Luft gave her thoughts on the immersive version of the film on
CBS News Sunday Morning, saying that her mother would approve of how the film was handled and that she looked forward to seeing a new generation of fans and audiences introduced to the film through this format. Ahead of the film's premiere, the use of AI to enhance the film for Sphere's capabilities was not met with unanimous favor from the public, given ongoing societal and governmental concerns regarding the
regulation of AI in filmmaking. In response to the criticism, Grossman remarked: "I don't think you understand how artists work, because for 30 years, I've been working for famous Hollywood filmmakers who come to me with another artist's work and say, 'See this picture from this movie? We want to do something like that'... The original movie already exists. We don't have to improve it."
Post-release Peter Debruge of
Variety was both intrigued by the immersive experience and disappointed by the results of AI-aided work on the film, saying: "Extremely high resolution is the enemy of this experience, I've decided, as it makes random details... pull our attention away from the characters. Meanwhile, the augmented reality aspects suggest the sky's the limit in terms of how creative people can get in reimagining classic movies." Debruge felt troubled by "whatever strange AI technique was used to replace Judy Garland's face with a poreless plastic sheen" and was distracted by crowd scenes in which "unblinking Munchkin extras stare into space for minutes on end", saying the characters landed in the
uncanny valley. G. Allen Johnson of the
San Francisco Chronicle said, "If it's possible to be both blown away — literally — and underwhelmed, the new version of 'The Wizard of Oz' accomplishes this rather dubious achievement." Johnson said the immersive sound mix would "likely bring tears to your eyes" but that the emotion on Garland's face was "muted by a waxy look". He judged that the "most head-scratching and unforgivable part... is the emotionless, synthetic sheen of its figures", believing the AI was best used for landscape scenes. Johnson believed that the tornado scene "alone might be worth the hefty price of admission", and thought it was best to view the film "not as a movie but as a theme park thrill ride akin to
Disneyland's '
Pirates of the Caribbean.'" Alissa Wilkinson of
The New York Times said that the film defied interpretation in just one manner. Assessing it from a cinematic perspective, she said: "Despite its presentation as such, it's not even really 'a movie.' And for long stretches, I was deeply unnerved." She believed the lack of a traditional visual
frame negatively impacted the visual storytelling and that "Some generated performances seem robotic, others smoothed-over and inhuman". Wilkinson was upset by the reduced running time compared to the original film and concluded that the Sphere version, "in trying to straddle the line between 'experiential storytelling' and 'film,' does neither as well as it could, undercutting what it celebrates". Wilkinson was disconcerted by the film as a portent of how works of art could be altered, saying that it "suggests that in the future, every artist's choices could be reversed, altered or ripped to shreds, then presented by their corporate owners as if they're essentially the original, just zhuzhed up a bit for a new century". Amy Nicholson of the
Los Angeles Times said that, "Despite my queasiness about cutting 'Oz' by half an hour, the experiment is a romp", finding the experience immersive and the foam apples and drone-piloted flying monkeys to be "giggle-inducing". Nicholson said the film "loses a dram of its spellcraft" once it reaches Munchkinland, criticizing the "cheesy martian" look of the Wizard's disembodied head and the glitchy appearance of the AI-generated extras; she singled out the hundreds of Emerald City citizens, waving distractingly without concern for Dorothy during a scene in which she pleads with the Wizard. Nicholson summarized: "Overall, you're so caught up observing the experience itself that the emotions of the story don’t register as anything more than theme-ride hydraulics." Liz Shannon Miller of
Consequence criticized the smoothing of Garland's face and the unevenness of how the actors were "plopped" onto new CGI backgrounds. Miller was particularly critical of the AI-rendered crowds, saying their faces did not look human-like or match the eyelines of the characters, and that each scene with them contained "the potential for nightmare fuel". Miller called the tornado sequence a "genuine achievement", believing the creative use of the venue enhanced the scene. Ultimately, she felt let down by the rest of the film, saying, "The only thing more frustrating than watching something that's completely creatively bankrupt is watching something with real sparks of potential get totally squandered." In 2026,
The Wizard of Oz at Sphere won a
Visual Effects Society Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project.
Commercial performance By October 17, 2025, the film had sold a million tickets and generated more than $130 million in revenue. Following the news, Sphere Entertainment's stock price rose 14.5 percent and closed at an all-time high price of $67.24. ==References==