Entertainment
Part 3′ After Major IMAX Loss
This year, moviegoers are spoilt for choice. The road to December leads to ‘Dunesday’, a meme, already approved by Robert Downey Jr. and Timothee Chalamet, when their respective movies, Avengers: Doomsday and Dune Part Three, clash on the big screen during the holiday season. The double-feature phenomenon was at rage when Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie shared the release date, and fans went all in.
But is it possible for Doomsday and Dune Part 3? The Barbenheimer phenomenon took on a life of its own because these were the movies for two polarizing audiences. The Cillian Murphy-led Oppenheimer, a WWII drama based on the life and works of its titular scientist, whose audience was dominantly male and Nolan fans. On the other hand, there was Margot Robbie-led Barbie, targeted towards family and female audiences. The audience didn’t overlap, and yet its novelty as a double-feature event undeniably worked. However, the audiences for Dune and Doomsday overlap: nerdy superhero fans who also happen to love sci-fi fantasy, and vice versa.
So, when it was revealed that Dune: Part Three will have IMAX exclusivity in America, with Doomsday only playing on select IMAX screens internationally, fans were devastated. IMAX plans its release schedule well in advance and has a long-standing relationship with Denis Villeneuve, who shot the Dune trilogy with IMAX technology. So, Doomsday marks the first Avengers movie that doesn’t get a wide IMAX release.
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Disney is Pushing for Other Premium Formats for ‘Avengers: Doomsday’
That said, there’s nothing to worry about, as per a new report, Disney is pushing Avengers: Doomsday on other premium formats like Dolby, D-Box, and 4DX. The brilliance is that these formats do not plan their release schedules as far in advance as IMAX. Further to satiate fans’ appetite for watching Doomsday on formats with top sound and picture, the studio is targeting around 322 chain-specific formats worldwide to make up for the lack of IMAX screens.
Will this strategy work? Hopefully, Dune 3 and Avengers: Doomsday will not cannibalize each other’s audiences by releasing simultaneously across all major formats worldwide. Furthermore, there’s precedent for two holiday releases, i.e., Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King and Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog 3. When they released together, it seemed Sonic ate up Mufasa’s audience, but the latter roared as a silent hit, earning $492.2 million and $723 million worldwide. As Dune Part 3 brings a close to the fan-favorite trilogy, Avengers: Doomsday marks a major reshuffle for the MCU after a major box office slump in the last few years. Fans want both films to win when they drop in theaters on December 18.
- Release Date
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December 18, 2026
- Writers
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Stephen McFeely, Michael Waldron, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee
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