Two of the biggest films of the year are set to hit on December 18th, with both “Dune: Part Three” and “Avengers: Doomsday” scheduled to face off in cinemas in an event being dubbed ‘Dunesday’.
For months, comparisons have been drawn to Barbenheimer – two films (“Barbie,” “Oppenheimer”), both of which were big successes, launching the same day. In addition, the more austere one (“Oppenheimer”) hogged all the IMAX screens while the more populist one (“Barbie”) took much of the rest.
A similar story here, beyond the obvious key difference of the Barbenheimer films being very different in tone and subject matter – effective counter-programming for each other as opposed to the Dunesday films, which skew much closer and more male.
More importantly, it appears as if neither film intends to move, which is creating nervousness among exhibitors and fans – especially in the wake of the stellar reception the “Dune: Part Three” teaser trailer received this week, which cemented the film’s December 18th date.
A new report at Heat Vision indicates that exhibitors are concerned that having the two juggernauts in such proximity could cannibalise each other. More urgently though, they’re worried about everyone else.
One exhibitor says: “It will be especially bad for specialty distributors because everybody’s going to free up every screen they have for those two films.” Concerns are that titles like “The Angry Birds Movie 3” and “Werewulf” opening the week after, and most especially the next “Jumanji” film opening the week before, could get lost in the Dunesday crush.
It’s not unfounded either, “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning” famously opened the week before Barbenheimer and found itself quickly pushed to fourth place on its second weekend with a 65% drop.
Both films are expected to do big business, though there is no ‘winner’ here because the competition isn’t in the same league money-wise – “Dune: Part Two” made $750 million compared to “Avengers: Endgame” making $2.8 billion.
