An emotional new Comcast commercial, which aired during the broadcast of the 87th Academy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 22, features a blind girl imagining her version of The Wizard of Oz.
The instantly viral ad, which stars a 7-year-old girl named Emily, promotes Comcast’s new talking guide, which allows visually impaired people to channel-surf through the “first talking guide” ever. The 60-second ad begins with Emily sharing how she envisions characters from her favorite movie.
“I think about the shape,” the little girl says as a tornado whirls in the background. “I think about color. I also think about sound. I take it into my brain and I think about… ‘What would it look like to me?'” Her imaginative characters include a Tin Man with a “big toe the size of a house” and a Cowardly Lion that’s the “size of a toy poodle” who happens to be “very scared of everything.”
“My Scarecrow has wooden teeth,” she notes, “and his fingernails are very long!” As for the heroine of the movie? “And Dorothy. She looks like me,” Emily says of Judy Garland‘s iconic role.
The ad is narrated by Robert Redford, and created by Goodby Silverstein & Partners NY. The creators used CGI to bring Emily’s vision to life. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts told the WSJ that he was “incredibly moved” by what was created by his company’s engineers and “couldn’t be more proud of how the team has brought Emily’s story to life.”
The paper also noted that typical 60-second spots during the broadcast cost approximately $4 million apiece. Comcast’s latest effort comes after a string of bad press recently including one where a company rep recently changed customers’ names in billing statements to bleep out “Asshole” and “SuperBitch.”
Watch the company’s 2015 Oscars spot above!