The DVD era had a good run until it didn't. A format that printed money for half a decade collapsed fast once streaming showed up, and Hollywood has been wary of betting too hard on any single new format ever since. So when someone senior enough to know better says the next big thing is actually built to last, it tends to get a room's attention.
Carolyn Blackwood is making exactly that argument. The former Warner Bros. co-president — who spent years overseeing the studio's film slate before departing in 2022 — is now running Sphere Studios, the content division behind the Las Vegas venue that opened in September 2023 and has spent the time since trying to figure out what, exactly, it wants to be when it grows up.
In a May 2026 interview with Deadline, Blackwood laid out the pitch: immersive cinema isn't a gimmick cycle. The venue's wraparound interior LED screen — roughly 160,000 square feet of display surface, seating close to 17,600 — creates a format constraint tight enough to demand purpose-built content, which she argues is actually protective. You can't just dump a wide-release print into the Sphere and call it a day. The format forces differentiation.
The current strategy leans heavily on existing IP. Sphere Studios is working to adapt library titles and active franchises into the venue's immersive format rather than developing wholly original properties from scratch — a lower-risk entry point that keeps recognizable brand equity in the room while the medium finds its feet.
The Las Vegas site remains the flagship, but a London Sphere is in development, and the company has signaled interest in additional international locations. Blackwood's job, more or less, is to make sure there's enough content ready when those doors open — and that whatever plays in them doesn't feel like a theme-park demo.
The next Sphere-format release date has not been publicly confirmed.