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The Wizard of Oz at Sphere — AI Pipeline Partner
Collaborating with Magnopus on one of the most technically ambitious immersive productions of its kind.
Overview
Reimagining a cultural landmark for one of the world's most technically ambitious venues is not a routine production challenge. The Wizard of Oz at Sphere was created as an immersive adaptation of the 1939 classic for Sphere's 160,000 square-foot, 16K environment — combining expanded visuals, AI-assisted image generation, reworked sequences, and multi-sensory effects for an entirely new format. It was a large, multi-partner undertaking led by Sphere Entertainment and produced in collaboration with major creative and technology teams.
Within that larger ecosystem, Viga Entertainment Technology's role was specific, technical, and collaborative. The project was led by Magnopus, whose team owned the project, defined the creative direction, assembled world-class collaborators, and entrusted us to help solve a focused set of difficult generative AI and image-pipeline challenges.
The Challenge
The challenge was not simply to "make things bigger." A beloved film like The Wizard of Oz carries enormous visual memory in the minds of audiences. Any attempt to expand, enhance, or reinterpret its frames for Sphere had to balance ambition with restraint. The production needed to:
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Extend or modify imagery while preserving stylistic integrity
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Protect the recognizability of iconic characters and environments
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Maintain believable structure and perspective when generating new visual content
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Ensure final imagery could withstand projection at immense scale
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Remain flexible enough to support an evolving, iterative production process
Our Role
Viga served as the generative AI technology partner. Working under Magnopus's creative guidance and in close collaboration with the wider project team, we helped develop tools and workflows that gave artists more control over generation, refinement, and finishing. Our work centered on helping the production create stylistically consistent environmental assets and character variations, support high-fidelity rendering of key characters, build flexible scene-manipulation workflows, and streamline parts of post-production that would otherwise have required extensive manual effort.
What We Built
Custom LoRAs
on SDXL and FLUX — lightweight style guides that kept environmental assets and visual variations consistent across the production
ControlNet pipelines
using Canny edge maps and depth maps to anchor AI generation to the composition and structure of original footage
Custom SDXL checkpoints
trained on extensive image datasets, enabling high-fidelity, consistent rendering of hero characters
ESRGAN upscaling
to ensure generated assets held detail at Sphere's enormous display scale
ComfyUI-based in/outpainting workflows
for extending landscapes, repairing shots, and removing anachronistic elements without breaking continuity
XMem-based character segmentation
to automate rotoscoping and reduce manual VFX effort
The Hardest Problems We Helped Solve
From our perspective, the toughest part of this project was not any single model or tool. It was the combination of fidelity, scale, and accountability. Every generated frame had to serve a larger artistic vision. Every adjustment had to feel respectful to a film that audiences already know intimately. And every technical solution had to integrate into a high-stakes production environment involving multiple partners and disciplines.
The real work was in building pipelines that artists could trust — tools that were flexible without becoming chaotic, powerful without becoming stylistically inconsistent, and efficient without sacrificing control.
The Result
The Wizard of Oz at Sphere became a landmark immersive production, using AI-assisted visual expansion, large-scale image processing, and a broad cross-disciplinary effort to adapt a classic film for a new kind of audience experience. Viga's contribution helped provide the AI infrastructure and workflow support needed for stylistic control, scene extension, precision generation, upscale finishing, and faster post-production operations.
A Note on Collaboration
This project is best understood as a collaboration. Magnopus led the effort and provided the creative direction that shaped everything. Sphere Entertainment and its production partners brought the larger experience to life. Our role at Viga was to be a focused technology partner — to listen carefully, build carefully, and help the creative team move through technically difficult territory with better tools and better control.
This case study is not about overstating authorship. It is about showing the kind of partner we are. When a project demands custom generative workflows, disciplined visual control, and close collaboration with lead creative teams, we know how to step in, contribute meaningfully, and help move the work forward. The Wizard of Oz at Sphere was one such opportunity, and we are proud to have played our part.
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