Musical sequel Wicked: For Good, enchanting audiences across the world, arrives as the 1939 fantasy continues to dominate pop culture

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ost of the biggest streaming services are notoriously neglectful of any movie released before the 1990s (and in some cases, before the turn of the millennium). Even the big theatrical nostalgia screenings are starting to creep into the 21st century, as movies that, to the older among us, don’t seem ready for a multi-decade anniversary. (Did Batman Begins really just turn 20?! Is Mean Girls seriously old enough to drink?) So it’s all the more impressive that one of the hottest properties of the past few years has been ... The Wizard of Oz, a movie far closer to its 100th anniversary than its 25th.

Of course, The Wizard of Oz as (shudder) intellectual property dates well before the 1939 release of the beloved MGM musical. L Frank Baum published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz at the turn of the previous century, in 1900. It spawned 13 increasingly eccentric sequels, which Baum wrote with what seemed like some reluctance right up until his death in 1919. His final Oz book was published posthumously, and the series continued on without him.

But no one is ever talking about the Oz book series when they refer to The Wizard of Oz. In fact, apart from a few oddball borrowings and the half-terrifying, half-tedious Disney adaptation Return to Oz, most of this material has gone ignored by film and TV. The 1939 Victor Fleming-directed movie starring Judy Garland, however, seems bigger than ever – literally, in the case of its engagement at the Sphere in Las Vegas. For this immersive venue used largely for mind-melting concerns, the movie has been both shortened (by 25 minutes, down to a skeletal 75) and extended (by AI technology, expanding the frame to fill the cavernous digital screen). Despite controversy about the changes, the attraction (let’s not call it a film, per se) is a smash, by some estimates making around $2m a day. It boasts higher ticket prices than a normal movie, but still: grosses at that level for just a few months would make it bigger than most traditional films from 2025. If it plays for a year, it could hit James Cameron territory.