'Dune: Part Three' Is Already Beating 'Avengers: Doomsday' in One Big Way
Would the Avengers be able to defeat a Sandworm in a fight? It's a great geeky "what if?" matchup, but in the real world, Dune has already triumphed over the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a notable way. Both Dune: Part Three and Avengers: Doomsday are scheduled to premiere in theaters on the same day, December 18. However, IMAX confirmed that when those two highly anticipated blockbusters open in America, only one of them will be shown on IMAX screens… and it's not the one with superheroes.
Avengers: Doomsday, the first Avengers movie since 2019's Endgame and the potential shot-in-the-arm the MCU needs after a string of underwhelming releases, was originally slated to come out on May 1. However, that date got pushed back to December 18, which is the same day that Denis Villeneuve's third Dune film, an adaptation of the book Dune Messiah, was set to come out. Warner Bros., the studio behind Dune, didn't want to move its big blockbuster genre flick, which is how two of the biggest movies of the year ended up sharing a premiere date.
They won't be sharing IMAX screens, though. At an IMAX Investor Presentation, the company confirmed that Dune: Part Three had secured an exclusive theatrical window on IMAX screens domestically. Avengers: Doomsday will still play on IMAX screens overseas, but not in the United States.
Dune: Part Three was partially shot with IMAX cameras, which is likely a big factor in why it's getting the IMAX screens rather than the MCU movie.
Not Being on IMAX Screens Is a Blow to Doomsday's Box Office Potential
IMAX screens are limited—not every movie theater has one, and the ones that do don't tend to have more than one. That means that there's always a fight between studios for which one of their films will get the biggest screen treatment. It's not just because movies look and sound better when shown on IMAX then they do on a standard screen. IMAX and other premium large format tickets are more expensive than a regular ticket. A more expensive ticket means a bigger box office.
Avengers: Doomsday, which has Robert Downey Jr. returning to the MCU but playing the Fantastic Four supervillain Doctor Doom this time around, will almost certainly make a ton of money. Will it make $2.799 billion the way Avengers: Endgame did? Not likely, given that interest in superhero movies seems to be waning. Not having the benefit of more-expensive IMAX tickets probably doesn't help.
There are other instances of big movies losing out when it comes to IMAX screens. Back in 2023, Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning only played in IMAX for one week, as when Oppenheimer premiered the following weekend, it took over all the IMAX screens. Dead Reckoning underperformed at the box office, and some analysts noted that it might have done better had it come out during a different time of the year, a weekend where it wouldn't be getting so quickly shuffled off IMAX screens.