'An all-time backfire': Warner Bros. wouldn't move Dune 3 away from Avengers: Doomsday

Warner Bros left Dune: Part Three on the same day as the biggest Marvel event since Endgame. Two months out, the queue for Doomsday is already longer than the one for Deadpool & Wolverine ever got. Both films open on 18 December 2026, and neither studio has budged. On 10 October, r/boxoffice got the latest presale update from Carlangonz, an independent tracker who follows ticket sales at Mexico's cinema chains. After roughly a week of general sales and almost two weeks of early sales on premium Infinity Vision screens, Avengers: Doomsday has passed the entire pre-release run of Deadpool & Wolverine, by about 7%. It is also tracking at around 89% of what Spider-Man: Brand New Day had sold by the morning it opened. These are one tracker's numbers, not Disney's. But they point the same way as everything Disney has said itself.The numbers so farEvery figure released so far makes 18 December look less like a rivalry and more like a mismatch:$50m+ in domestic presales by 9 September, more than three months before release, announced by Disney CFO Hugh Johnston at an investor conference. Over 70% of those tickets were for Infinity Vision, the premium-screen certification Disney launched at CinemaCon. Mexico: Infinity Vision sales opened on 28 September, general sales on 2 October. That is the window in which Doomsday passed Deadpool & Wolverine's whole run. Asia has not even started. Presales there, per the thread, open about two weeks before release. For scale, Deadpool & Wolverine opened to $211m in the US in 2024 and finished on $1.34bn worldwide. Dune: Part Two, a hit by any sane standard, made about $714m worldwide in its entire run. Dune: Part Three isn't losing to a bad Marvel film. It's losing to a Marvel film nobody has seen yet. None of which makes Dune a flop. It makes it the second film on the night. Read more: Secret's out — Marvel Studios' MCU spy thriller series Zodiac has a title and release date Why Warner Bros held its nerveTo be fair, the date looked brave rather than daft when it was set. Marvel was in a rough patch: Thunderbolts* underperformed, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps stalled around the half-billion mark. Dune had momentum of its own: in April, the first 70mm IMAX shows for its opening weekend sold out in North America and London, eight months early. "This incredible result is proof that the fans' anticipation to experience Dune: Part Three as it was meant to be — on the biggest, boldest screens possible — is at a fever pitch." — Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros president of global distribution, in April The problem is that Doomsday is not a normal Marvel film. Robert Downey Jr returns as Doctor Doom, Chris Evans is back, and so are Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen's X-Men. r/boxoffice's verdict on Warner's gamble was blunt: "Dune really messed up... it's an all time backfire." Another put the scale more cheekily: Doomsday "could legitimately be the worst movie in history (it won't be) and still make $1B opening weekend." A secondary school worker in the thread offered the playground poll: 90% of students were excited about the Doomsday teasers, while only "a handful of teachers" mention Dune.What happens on 18 DecemberThe optimists in the thread are already sketching a record $1.2bn worldwide opening and calling it the "first 3 billion dollar movie". Those are fan forecasts, not tracking, and the main marketing push for Doomsday hasn't started yet. Dune: Part Three still has the novel Dune Messiah, Villeneuve's reputation and those 70mm screens. But Villeneuve's next job is Bond, and he will want this one to count before he goes. Right now, he is the man who brought a sandworm to a fight with the entire Marvel back catalogue, and most of the queue is there for Doctor Doom. Read more: Tom Cruise's Digger flopped, so Nolan got his Imax screens back. Barbie should be nervous