The Problem With Showing Classic Movies on the Most Advanced Screens…

This week, Cosm, the immersive event space company, launched their “shared reality” screenings of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory at their Los Angeles and Dallas locations. It’s the most recent effort in Cosm’s multi-film partnership with Warner Bros., which has shown The Matrix and will soon tackle Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

Cosm operates primarily in sports, with 360-degree cameras across NBA, NHL, and NCAA arenas feeding into its massive dome screens in real time. The result is a panoramic, arena-style viewing experience—think the Sphere, but for televised athletics. As an audience member, you feel like you’re in the middle of the action. It’s more than a gimmick.

Much like the Sphere’s recent screenings of The Wizard of Oz, Cosm’s Wonka experience has been met with mixed reviews. While early write-ups from the Los Angeles and Dallas press are relatively positive, others equated the experience to sludge content.

SOME movies in this format is dope as fuck.

Some are dumb as fuck.

This is a prime example of dumb as fuck https://t.co/0ulNquj1qP pic.twitter.com/mfGYgRGOg4
— THE ERASER VINCE COLLETTA (@ShawnNOrlando) November 25, 2025

Many viewed the combo of the Gene Wilder classic and contemporary computer graphics as jarring. These experiential screenings have been seen as catering to dwindling attention spans and detracting from the films rather than enhancing them. It’s the big-screen equivalent of the Family Guy/Subway Surfers TikToks.

The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere has caught the (cowardly) lion’s share of the backlash. Forbes reports that approximately 90 percent of the film was “touched up” using AI, which was of course also used to fill out the spherical dimensions of the experience.

“Dude, the wizard of oz at the Las Vegas sphere looks so good!”

The Wizard of Oz at the Las Vegas sphere: https://t.co/CyWVCwGeVr pic.twitter.com/sdT27tu2iV
— Beans (@toh_week) August 1, 2025

Despite the split reactions, these screenings have been great successes for Cosm and the Sphere. While Cosm has been selling out the bulk of its Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory screenings, the Sphere reported more than a million tickets sold just seven weeks after launching the Oz experience, translating to over $130 million in revenue.

Luckily for Wonka fans, Cosm’s experience is not the most traumatic adaptation in recent memory.

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