‘Dune 3’ and ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ in Stand-Off Over Same Release Date: “Somebody’s Gotta Move”

December 18, 2026 is going to be a big day for movie fans. That’s the day Warner Bros. and Marvel Studios are currently set to unleash two absolute cinematic heavyweights at the exact same time.

via: THR

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.

“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 to huge movies throughout the two weeks of the Christmas holiday.”

The week before Christmas is considered a highly coveted release window as moviegoing tends to be high over the holidays going into the new year. 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.

One element that creates some urgency is the matter of spoilers. Marvel fans generally like to see major new releases quickly to avoid the glut of online spoilers. The first two Dune films were faithful to Frank Herbert’s first well-known Dune novel, but the teaser trailer suggests Part Three is more loosely based on Herbert’s lesser-known Dune Messiah and, as such, probably contains plenty of surprises that fans won’t want to be spoiled on either.

So, how did this showdown get set up? Dune claimed the coveted ground first, setting its date back in 2024. The next Avengers movie (then called The Kang Dynasty) was originally planned for May 2025, but then moved its date twice, with creative changes — including the Russo Bros. boarding Doomsday and Secret Wars and moving away from Jonathan Majors’ Kang. Marvel even launched a countdown clock to timed to the Dec. 18 date.

Both films are expected to be big box office draws. But while the Marvel brand has stumbled lately when judged against its past success, the return of the Avengers brand with some of the franchise’s most popular actors is expected to come out on top (Dune: Part Two made $750 million, Avengers: Endgame made $2.8 billion).

Back in the day, several tentpole movies opening around the same time wasn’t hugely unusual (Batman, Ghostbusters II, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Lethal Weapon 2 all famously opened within about a month of each other in 1989). It’s the level of theatrical box office drought — for both exhibitors and studios — that makes the Avengers vs. Dune face-off feel like a bit, well, wasteful — like Mad Max: Fury Road’s Immortan Joe blasting peasants dying of thirst a massive 10 second waterfall that soaks into the sand.

When Doomsday star Robert Downey Jr. and Chalamet were at an event in January, Downey joked about the rivalry: “We both have films opening on Dec 18, and we decided to coin it — we’re thinking ‘Dunesday.’ We’ll see if we’re still friends by then.”