The Wizard of Oz Remake: A Groundbreaking AI-Generated Film
A New Era in Cinema
When Dorothy Gale was picked up by a twister from her family’s Kansas farm 86 years ago, she was taken to a magical place called Oz. It turns out, Dorothy’s journey isn’t complete, and soon she will be landing in another magical place: The Sphere in Las Vegas.
At the start of its Google Cloud Next conference yesterday, Google Cloud pulled the green curtain back from one of its latest endeavors: using generative AI to help remake The Wizard of Oz in super high-def to fit Sphere’s massive, curved screen. The movie is expected to debut in the landmark Vegas theater on August 28.
A Joint Effort
The remake is a joint effort of Sphere Studios, Magnopus, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Google. The companies have been working for years to figure out how to make it.
"We talked about doing it in different ways," says Jane Rosenthal, the Academy and Emmy Award-nominated producer who is a producer on the remake. "We realized that we really needed to do it with AI."
Fitting the Original Film on a New Screen
One of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to fit the original film, shot in a 4×3 format, on Sphere’s massive 160,000 square-foot curved screen, which is the world’s highest definition screen. The original film lacks the visual resolution necessary for today’s high-definition screens.
Upscaling the Original Film
The solution: Use Google generative AI models, including Gemini, Veo, and Imagen, to upscale the original’s celluloid-based images into ultra-high 16k resolution required by the Sphere’s 268 million pixels.
Filling Out the Scenes
The second big challenge was filling out the scenes to fit the Sphere’s wide-angle and immersive view. The original 102-minute film featured many close-up shots, which was necessary given the limited resolution of the day’s cameras. However, simply expanding the original movie’s 4×3 close-up shots on the Sphere’s massive 240-foot-tall wraparound screen would not only fail to take advantage of the one-of-a-kind $2.3-billion venue, but it just wouldn’t look very good either.
Outpainting: A New Technique
The solution: a new technique called "outpainting" that enables the filmmakers to fill-in more of the movie set than what made it into the final film. This work required painstaking work on the part of the filmmakers, who needed to pay close attention to items in the movie, such as Dorothy’s red slippers, that we know exist but didn’t appear in every screen.
The Power of AI
Outpainting also relied heavily on Google’s AI models to "fill in" the additions to the scenes. The filmmakers fine-tuned Google AI models to "learn" specifics about the characters, everything from the Tin Man’s lurching gait to details of Dorothy’s freckles. The models then generated video consistent with the outpainting-based expansion of the original film.
A Leap of Faith
"It wasn’t always clear whether the AI-based remake would work," says Jim Dolan, executive chairman and CEO of Sphere Entertainment. "When you have innovation like this, you don’t always know where it’s going to go. You have to be able to take a leap of faith. What you’re going to see in The Wizard of Oz at Sphere is clearly a leap of faith."
Conclusion
The Wizard of Oz remake is a groundbreaking film that showcases the power of AI in the film industry. Using generative AI models to upscale the original film and fill in the scenes, the filmmakers have created a new genre of cinema that is both faithful to the original and innovative in its approach.
FAQs
Q: What is the remake of The Wizard of Oz?
A: The remake is an AI-generated film that uses generative AI models to upscale the original film and fill in the scenes to fit Sphere’s massive curved screen.
Q: Who is producing the remake?
A: The remake is a joint effort of Sphere Studios, Magnopus, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Google.
Q: When will the remake debut?
A: The movie is expected to debut in the landmark Vegas theater on August 28.
Q: What is outpainting?
A: Outpainting is a new technique that enables the filmmakers to fill-in more of the movie set than what made it into the final film.
Q: How did the filmmakers use AI in the remake?
A: The filmmakers used Google generative AI models, including Gemini, Veo, and Imagen, to upscale the original’s celluloid-based images and fill in the scenes.
