Harry Potter 360-degree movie opens at Hollywood Park’s Cosm theater

Harry Potter fans, listen up. There’s a new option in town to enjoy your favorite wizard and his friends as they fight to defeat you-know-who.

The Cosm experiential theater, which provides surround theatrical experiences for sporting events and films, is opening its own 360-degree version of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” for its 25th anniversary in cooperation with Warner Bros. Pictures. Screenings begin Friday, May 8.

“We spent months and months on this,” said Jeb Terry Jr., the company’s CEO. Cosm calls its offerings “shared reality” and says its aim is to lure people back into theaters to enjoy productions they can’t see at home on TV.  The theater’s main offering to date has been live sporting events such as the World Series, football, basketball, soccer games and professional boxing.

“We want to tell the story in ways that have never been done,” Terry said.

This is the third classic movie that the Cosm has launched, after “The Matrix” and the original “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” both of which continue to play in repertory at the theater.

Cosm is located at Hollywood Park Mall in Inglewood, between Sofi Stadium and the Intuit Dome. Tickets to see the shows start at $40 and up, and entitle people to a comfortable booth with food-and-drink table service, surrounded by a giant planetarium-sized screen. Parking is validated for four hours.

A second Cosm is open in Dallas, and others are planned for Atlanta, Detroit and Cleveland.

The viewing is reminiscent of the Sphere in Las Vegas with its ground-breaking dome technology except that it’s not completely 360-degrees around. Unlike the “Wizard of Oz” movie experience currently running there, Cosm technical wizards have not remastered the original movie entirely. Instead, the movie plays in a large-screen format, but details are extended beyond the screen that enlarge the visual experience. For example, a forest scene might have trees surrounding the original image that add to the feeling of being there. Or details of a grand castle surround the castle scenes, expanding the view.

Cosm executives haven’t said whether they’ll continue to create new shows from the Harry Potter canon, or move onto something else. Tickets for this show are currently on sale, and are already sold out on some dates.

In addition to the show, Cosm has added special cocktails named after the four houses of the Hogwarts Academy, available for purchase at the venue’s bars, and there are also bottles of nonalcoholic “butter beer” for sale.

Potter-themed snacks are also for sale, such as Shepherd’s pie, a chocolate “frog,” Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour (jelly) Beans and more, delivered by servers to your seat.

This Harry Potter show is also slated to appear at the Cosm location in Dallas, and in other locations later on.

Learn more: Cosm.com  1252 District Drive, Inglewood