Star Wars: A New Hope to Hit Cosm's LED Dome Under New Disney Deal

Cosm and Disney have signed a multi-year, multi-film partnership that will place the studio's films inside Cosm's shared reality theaters, starting with "Star Wars: A New Hope" in the LED Dome from March.

The debut, announced to Variety, will screen the 1977 film in its original format on the center of the Dome's LED screen while immersive visuals surround it. The experience will place viewers on Tatooine, with the Rebel Alliance on Yavin 4, inside the Death Star, and alongside the Millennium Falcon at lightspeed.

The film turns 50 in 2027 — and that is also when tickets go on sale. The gap between a March debut announcement and a 2027 on-sale date is one the companies did not explain. Neither did they name a price, a runtime for the experience, or any film beyond "A New Hope" in the deal.

What drives the creative choices?

Alexis Scalice, VP and head of Cosm Studios, told Variety the film has topped audience requests since experiential cinema launched at Cosm. "Since we've launched experiential cinema at Cosm, people have been asking for this film for the last year and a half," Scalice said. "We've listened, and trust us, we are just as excited. We can celebrate with the fans, too."

Scalice described a process she calls "decoding the fan": studying what audiences prioritize and respond to before deciding which elements enter the immersive layer. The approach is selective, not exhaustive.

"The film remains the hero, and how can we expand?" she said. "We pick those moments that are almost like the greatest hits of an album, like the trash compactor scene and the lightspeed [in 'A New Hope']. But then there's these other elements that may not have been a come-out scene, but in shared reality, it becomes a moment."

Who is building it, and where?

"Star Wars: A New Hope" at Cosm is developed alongside Disney, Lucasfilm, Industrial Light & Magic and MakeMake. It will run at four Cosm venues:

• Atlanta
• Dallas
• Detroit
• Los Angeles

The rollout marks Disney as the third major studio to partner with Cosm, after Warner Bros. Pictures and Universal Film. That tally matters: with three of Hollywood's largest rights-holders signed, shared reality cinema shifts from a novelty toward a distribution channel the studios take seriously — though none has yet said how much of a slate will follow.

Cosm's calendar already points that way. "Shrek" begins Dec. 15 at the shared reality theater, the first animated film to play there, and the first test of whether family animation, not just event spectacle, can carry the format.

What does this change for audiences? For now, a longer wait than the announcement implies: a named film, four cities, and a 2027 ticket window. The real signal is the multi-year framing — Disney is committing to more than one title, and Cosm now has the studio relationships to fill its domes well beyond "A New Hope."