On the afternoon of April 14, the Las Vegas Strip got a new kind of spectacle: cellphone video of a lone figure standing on top of the Sphere, the 366-foot-tall, $2.3 billion entertainment dome just east of the Venetian. A helicopter hovered overhead while crowds filmed from resort windows and sidewalks, and social feeds quickly lit up with one big question: was that world-famous climber Alex Honnold on the roof of Vegas’ giant glowing orb?
Given Sphere’s slate of large-scale immersive projects and the obvious coordination involved, many observers are treating the episode as part of a planned production rather than a spur-of-the-moment stunt.
What the video shows
The images match eyewitness accounts from the Strip and immediately triggered a wave of online guesses that the climber was one of the world’s best-known free soloists. The framing of the shot, the high vantage point, and the coordinated air support all added to the sense that this was not some random dare, but a choreographed moment.
Connected to Sphere’s ‘From the Edge’
Sphere Studios has already announced a project that seems tailor-made for what viewers saw over the weekend. The company is producing a film titled From The Edge, directed by E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, featuring five extreme athletes, including rock climber Alex Honnold.
Sphere Studios says filming is underway in several locations, among them Las Vegas, and that the production will use the company’s ultra high-resolution “Big Sky” camera system to capture imagery suited for the venue’s 16K display. The production announcement outlines the athletes involved and the overall shooting plan, and the timing of that work lines up with the apparent climb on the Sphere.
Why people suspect Honnold
According to SFGATE, the climber in the video “appears to be Alex Honnold,” and the scope of the Sphere project makes that a reasonable guess rather than pure wishful thinking. Honnold, who now lives in the Las Vegas area, has been in the spotlight recently for high-profile urban climbs…