Two New Films in Production for Vegas Sphere

Posted on: June 6, 2024, 11:44h. 

Last updated on: June 24, 2024, 09:31h.

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

Two new hour-long films are reportedly in production for the Sphere at Venetian. One, or both, will replace “Postcard from Earth,” the Darren Aronofsky sci-fi opus that has screened in between live music performances since the venue opened last September.

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

One of the films will be a documentary about U2, whose 40-show “U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere” residency last year — even without the drumming of band co-founder Larry Mullen Jr. — proved the hi-tech venue’s potential for blowing minds and generating revenue.

This scoop comes from Scott Roeben of our own Vital Vegas, by the way, so you can bet that it’s reliable. You can also bet that it briefly, and entirely, shifted the focus of Sphere Entertainment — a giant, publicly traded corporation worth $1.34 billion — to discovering who the hell leaked this information to him.

U2, too small to be seen on the stage at the center, perform “Where the Streets Have No Name” at the Sphere last fall. (Image: Daniel Boud/themonthly.com)

The Sphere’s ability to generate revenue was essential for it to prove, incidentally, after a regrettable precedent set by James Dolan. The Sphere’s head agreed to pay U2 a reported 90% of the gate and $10 million to fund its Sphere-dedicated video graphics. And now, Beyonce, Harry Styles, and the Eagles all reportedly want the same deal to play there.

According to Vital Vegas, the old Dubliners themselves were in Vegas, on June 3, for conversations with the Sphere’s creative team about their documentary before heading to MSG Sphere Studios in Burbank, Calif., where new Sphere visuals are tested in a ¼-scale “Baby Sphere.”

The rock doc is expected to rely extensively on U2 footage shot in the Sphere by the Sphere.

Wizard of Awes

You’ll probably find the other film much more exciting, since its subject tugs directly at the heartstrings of every single person born in another millennium — not just the white, male Gen Xers of U2’s core fan base.

AI also generated this intriguing interpretation of Dorothy on the outside of the Sphere. (Image: Chat GPT)

According to Vital Vegas, “The Wizard of Oz” will receive a Spherification, which will of course make full use of the world’s second-largest video screen — the largest being the one outside the Sphere.

The project will be produced by Warner Bros. Pictures, which purchased the rights to the 1939 classic from MGM Studios about 15 years ago along with all other MGM productions before 1986, a fact that most movie fans remain unaware of.

This film will mark a sort of homecoming for the franchise in Las Vegas. When the new MGM Grand opened in 1993, guests were greeted by wax figures of Dorothy and her cohorts right after they entered the property underneath the MGM lion’s head — not its mouth, as legend still has it.

From there, guests even followed a yellow brick road around the casino and hotel lobby, which wound past memorabilia from the movie, to Emerald City. This was a small theater where a magic show, “The Wizard’s Secrets,” was performed.

The theming was removed as part of a two-year renovation that began in 1996.

For the latest Sphere updates, keep up with Scott at VitalVegas.com. We barely can!