Published Date: 07-01-26

Flying into Las Vegas high above the Nevada Desert, the first thing you might notice is an enormous glowing orb towering over the famous Strip. That landmark is Sphere – the most advanced multimedia venue in the world.

Programming content for such an impressive venue is no easy task – but that’s the job of Sphere Entertainment’s Head of Sphere Studios, Carolyn Blackwood.

Blackwood has had a celebrated career in the “traditional” entertainment industry, having served as President of New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. COO prior to joining Sphere Entertainment. But she’s never had a job quite like this one.

In the two years since starting at Sphere, she’s brought some incredible experiences to life, most notablythe immersive version of The Wizard of Oz at Sphere.

We spoke with Carolyn about what it’s like to tell stories at the biggest scale possible, and what’s in store for Sphere going forward.

JC TAYLOR: I want to ask about your career journey, because you’ve got decades of experience in the entertainment industry prior to Sphere. Can you tell me a little bit about your early career, and how your understanding of creativity and business has evolved since?

CAROLYN BLACKWOOD: My first job in the industry was in legal and business affairs at an independent film company called MDP Worldwide Entertainment, where I worked for Mark Damon. And the great thing about independent film is that since you have fewer resources to work with, you end up learning several disciplines regardless of what your designated area of expertise is supposed to be.

So, I learned distribution, I learned acquisitions, I learned film financing. And I learned how a studio operates, even if it was at a small scale. When you do it that way, you gain an appreciation for the importance of everybody’s role and how it all fits together. Every project that actually gets made is a mini miracle, so I had a real respect for the process and the multitude of decisions that come together to make a film. I recommend this to people all the time who are thinking about careers in entertainment: “If you can start out in independent film, start out in independent film.”

JC: In the past 10 years, we’ve seen a massive shift in how audiences engage with entertainment. How have you dealt with that? 

CB: One of the things I’ve learned is that it’s always about the audience. If you put the audience first, the form of distribution isn’t as important. I became less concerned about whether we were going to see this at an arthouse theater, or on a plane, or in IMAX, or on their couch. I think first about “what are we creating?” and “what does the audience want to experience?” 

Now that I’ve pivoted into this new environment with Sphere, it’s still about the audience, but I am focused on what their experience is going to look like in this specific, amazing, immersive venue. In a way it’s been liberating, because we’re building an experience with one specific venue in mind. 

JC: The Wizard of Oz at Sphere is a great example of what you’re talking about. You had to create a whole new experience for people who know and love that original film. How do you balance their expectation with your creative freedom?

CB: One of the things I love most about The Wizard of Oz at Sphere experience is that we were not remastering the original work – this is not akin to The Criterion Collection. The whole idea of it was to take this beloved property and bring it to life as a marriage between that unbelievable piece of art and the magic of Sphere to create something entirely new.

JC: Help me zoom in on this whole process and the pieces of Sphere that help make this happen. Can you tell me about Sphere Studios?

CB: Traditional venues, when they book an artist, they sort of hand them the keys and Wi-Fi password and let them do what they want. Sphere isn’t like that. It’s a venue, but it’s also a brand. It is, in and of itself, a very special experience.

It also requires a studio custom-built to create content for the screen. Our studio is responsible for what appears on that canvas, both on the outside – what we call the Exosphere – and on the inside – which we call the media plane. And then there’s a bunch of LED surfaces in our Atrium, too, where we customize content to create a more holistic experience for an audience member. 

If you don’t have a studio that knows how to program, create, and take audiences on that journey, you’re never really going to take full advantage of what’s possible with Sphere’s medium. We learn every single time we launch something. We get to push the boundaries of the medium every single time. We get to hone our craft, learn more about our capabilities and the venue, and continue to go beyond expectations. 

JC: Let’s use The Wizard of Oz as sort of a case study because it’s such a huge hit. How did that conversation start? From the idea to the show opening, what was that timeline like?

CB: When I walked in the door almost two years ago, it was in the exploration phase. The technology was still in its infancy – Sphere had just launched with Darren Aronofsky’s Postcard from Earth. This was kind of “the second pancake.” Instead of using our proprietary Big Sky camera system to shoot at 18k resolution for this original experience, we were adapting an existing film for the media plane. You can’t just stretch it, because it’s a rectilinear image. How were we going to do that at the right resolution to properly put audiences inside the Wizard of Oz? That’s where AI came into play.

Using these new tools, we were able to fill out the frame. In the original film, you might have a wide shot of Dorothy and her friends on a journey, and then you’d cut into a close-up shot of just Dorothy. In Sphere, that’s not an option. Through AI technologies that we developed alongside Google DeepMind, we were able to fill out the frame digitally. We did what’s called out-painting techniques, where we were able to train the model on what the characters were supposed to look like and then expand the frame to include their legs, bodies, arms, etc.

We also used something called super resolution to make everything extremely sharp, since we’re on this enormous 18k resolution screen that’s much bigger than what the original film would have been projected on.

There was also a performance aspect where, for example, a character might walk out of frame – which isn’t something you can get away with in Sphere. So, we used AI to have that character exit the scene in a way that makes sense and is organic to the scene and action of the character.

Those technologies took a lot of time and a lot of artistic involvement to develop and get right. We’re still working on it, and the technology is still improving. It was very important for us to use these tools to stay authentic to the original film. It took about two years from start to finish to bring this experience to life.

It’s still a journey we’re on to adapt films into our medium and to use technology in the most beneficial way that is additive to our creative partners. None of this could be created by AI alone, we need human creativity and expertise to adapt these traditional movies. 

JC: How do you see Sphere in the context of the broader entertainment industry?

CB: I think there’s something important about creating these shared, unforgettable experiences. The idea that Sphere has become a cultural, zeitgeisty thing in its own right is not just because people want to go and see this big, glowing orb in the desert. They want to go because they want to feel like they are experiencing something with a lot of other people that is new and meaningful.

One hundred years ago, there were similar conversations about traditional movie theaters and how they influenced culture and brought people together. People want to experience things that they find inspiring, unforgettable, and meaningful, and we’re committed to that journey. 

JC: All the work you described to bring The Wizard of Oz to life sounds exhausting, so you may be mad at me for making you think about doing it all again, but what can you tell me about the future of Sphere studios?

CB: We have a few original ideas that we’ve been thinking about and developing. We’re not a traditional studio, so we don’t have 15 or 20 things in the pipeline ready to be greenlit.

Everyone that knows me knows I’m a huge fan of horror. I love the idea of potentially developing a horror experience inside of Sphere. There’s a couple of genres that are ripe for the communal experience – comedy being one because everyone likes to laugh together, and horror is another – everyone loves to be scared together. I have a lot of ambition for things like that. 

And then there are licensed experiences. Obviously, there are a lot of wonderful films that have been made over the past 100 years that could be adapted in a similar way we did Oz – and create something that is wholly different and still honors the original. We are talking to many different IP holders and studios about options that could lend themselves well to Sphere. Beyond The Rocky Horror Picture Show at Sphere, which we recently announced is slated for 2027, I can’t give you any scoop, but we are in multiple discussions with many people.

JC: What do you see as the biggest challenges you’re facing in 2026 and beyond?

CB: I am ridiculously fortunate because the space I operate in now is not the traditional entertainment media ecosystem, which is facing, of course, numerous challenges that you’re all familiar with. I get to think of my challenges as opportunities. We are a new medium. We are growing. We are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible within our unique venue. Yes, there are challenges – but at the same time, it’s a tremendous opportunity because it is something that’s in service of audiences. It’s awe-inspiring. People talk about raising the bar every time they see something new there. That, to me, is a gift.