Tickets are already on sale for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Part III in 70mm IMAX and several screenings have already sold out. It’s still eight months until Dunesday, aka the day when Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Part III and Marvel’s Avengers: Doomsday go head to head at the international box office. Both films are set to hit ... Dune Part III IMAX screenings are already selling out
Tickets are already on sale for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Part III in 70mm IMAX and several screenings have already sold out.
It’s still eight months until Dunesday, aka the day when Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Part III and Marvel’s Avengers: Doomsday go head to head at the international box office. Both films are set to hit cinemas on the 18th December and neither is willing to back down.
It now seems like Warner Bros. has taken the lead slightly as tickets for Dune Part III have gone on sale, at least for the 70mm IMAX screenings. It was reported last month that Dune Part III had already secured itself an IMAX heavy opening weekend, leaving Doomsday to fight over regular cinema screens.
And people are buying those tickets. In London, the three BFI IMAX screenings for the opening weekend have all sold out already.
Does this mean Villeneuve’s epic sequel will win that first weekend for sure? It might be too soon to tell, but Warner Bros. is definitely being very smart about how it approaches such a tight competition.
It’s not just Warner Bros. that will benefit financially from such early ticket sales. The internet is now full of people reselling the tickets they managed to grab and, according to SlashFilm, they can go for up to $2100 across the pond. Going to the cinema has become quite an expensive hobby, but that’s a whole new level.
In the US, there are only 18 70mm IMAX locations, so you can guess how busy those ticket websites were with fans trying to get their tickets. After all, Villeneuve has previously said that the film is meant to be experienced in IMAX 70mm.
“So the movie is really meant to be an IMAX experience and to be seen on the biggest screen as possible. That’s the way we dreamed the movie,” the director said.
It’s not just Dune Part III that is releasing tickets on sale several months before the film’s premiere and relying heavily on IMAX screenings. Christopher Nolan’s highly awaited The Odyssey, filmed entirely with IMAX cameras, also released tickets on sale a whole year before the film is due to open this July. Once again, the BFI IMAX screenings are fully sold out at the time of writing this.
Dunesday could – and probably will – overtake Barbenheimer as the most insane opening weekend at the movies. This writer is equally excited and scared for what that December weekend holds.
