'Dune 3' vs. 'Avengers: Doomsday' on Dec. 18: "Somebody's Gotta Move"
Chris Hemsworth as Thor vs. Timothée Chalamet as Paul in Dune 2
Paramount Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection; Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection
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The biggest fantasy hero battle in Hollywood is shaping up over a release date: Dec. 18.
While Warner Bros.’ and Legendary’s Dune: Part Three and Disney and Marvel’s Avengers: Doomsday have officially claimed the same release date for months, this week’s drop of the Dune movie’s poster publicly declaring the Dec. 18 date seemed to solidify the stand-off as actually happening.
Which means that at a time when theaters are starving to fill seats, two of the year’s most anticipated films — perhaps the most anticipated — are set to arrive on the exact same day.
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“Someone’s gotta move,” groaned a representative for one theater chain. “That’s a level of overwhelm that doesn’t make sense. Especially after the last few years [of theaters struggling]. An Avengers movie and Dune 3 are both sure things.”
Unlike when the gleefully mismatched Barbie and Oppenheimer famously faced off in July 2023 to create the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon, these two epic fantasy franchise sequels have plenty of broad-appeal, male-skewing audience overlap.
2024’s Dune: Part Two skewed heavily male on its opening weekend at 68 percent, with many tickets buyers well over the age of 25. 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, conversely, only saw a gender split of 60 percent male and 40 percent female with Millennials and Gen Zers making up the majority of the audience.
The issue isn’t just a matter of two massive films potentially selling fewer tickets overall because of the presence of the other. (Big fans of both franchises will probably see both films in theaters, though some who cannot spare the time or money to see two films in theaters around the same time will doubtless save one for streaming). There’s also the issue of other films in the marketplace at the same time (the biggies are Ice Age 6, Robert Eggers’ Werewulf and Jumanji 3, plus likely some indie efforts). “It will be especially bad for specialty distributors because everybody’s going to free up every screen they have for those two films,” says the exhibitor.
For Dune and Avengers, however, there is another big issue. And by big, we mean big screens, or Premium Large Format screens, like Imax.
Dune has secured Imax screens for three weeks of exclusivity. Dune would generally be considered the bigger Imax draw anyway given director Denis Villeneuve’s level of sci-fi spectacle and that the film was partially filmed using Imax cameras. But still: observers worry Disney is leaving money on the table by not having Imax screens available. “Doomsday not getting the PLF is insane,” notes the exhibitor. “It’s free money.” The two films will share the spoils of the non-Imax PLFs, however.
Insiders say Disney and Marvel is unwavering in its decision to stick with the date, despite Dune‘s Imax exclusivity. While Imax and premium large format screens are in hot demand, there are plenty of regular screens. Barbie famously didn’t get the Imax treatment because of Christoper Nolan’s Oppenheimer, yet made far more money (north of $1.447 billion globally, to Oppenheimer’s tidy $975 million, Imax accounting for more than $183 million of that).
“There will plenty of regular auditoriums left over for both films once the rest of the premium large-format screens ae divide up,” says another exhibitor. “For us, it’s a win-win. We’ll have two huge movies throughout the two weeks of the Christmas holiday.”
The week before Christmas is considered a highly coveted corridor as moviegoing tends to remain high over the holidays going into the new year, thanks to kids being out of school and adults taking time off of work. As such, it’s also considered the window that can most easily withstand two tentpole movies going head to head — moviegoers generally have enough free time to see more than one film. In pre-pandemic times, six, eight or even 10 movies of different sizes could prosper during the holidays. That’s still the case, although the overall number of releases may have decreased.
One element that creates some urgency is the matter of spoilers. Marvel f