1939 Classic Has Generated Over $400 Million in Ticket Sales Since Last Summer
We're currently living in a world where movies can bring in massive amounts of money at the box office, generating hundreds of millions of dollars for their distributors, but there's a price: making those movies also costs a small fortune. Back in the 1930s, an Academy Award-winning film could be made for as little as $3 million. Of course, in those times, tickets to the movies cost around 25 cents, so recouping that investment was a little harder for the major studios.
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The Wizard of Oz premiered in 1939, and now, 87 years later, it's doing the unthinkable and continuing to succeed, bringing in a whopping amount of money through ticket sales. Last summer, the film premiered at The Sphere in Las Vegas, and since then has sold more than 3 million total tickets and generated over $400 million in ticket sales.
The Sphere, a new landmark in the Nevada city where artists like The Backstreet Boys put on immersive residencies, has taken the movie about a young girl transported to a magical world who just wants to go home, and breathed new life into it through a one-of-a-kind visual reimagining on a 160,000-square-foot interior display.
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"To take advantage of Sphere Immersive Sound's 167,000 programmable speakers, and ability to direct sound anywhere in the venue, the original film's score has been re-recorded to take on new clarity. Multi-sensory 4D elements have been combined and leveraged for maximum impact to make audiences feel like they are in the experience alongside the characters, such as high-velocity wind arrays, atmospheric fog, towering fire bursts, and infrasound haptic seats," says the venue's website, where individual tickets start at $104.
Nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and winning two for its music, The Wizard of Oz was re-released in theaters twice after its initial premiere, first in 1949 and again in 1955. In 1956, it was aired on CBS, introducing even more fans to the timeless classic. It's currently available to stream on HBO Max, or through HBO Max bundles on Hulu, Disney Plus, and Amazon Prime.
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This story was originally published June 17, 2026 at 3:26 PM.