Tom Cruise’s seventh “Mission” only had IMAX screens for a little over a week before it had to give them up for Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer”. Nolan’s film is now holding all those giant format screens for at least three weeks.
Turns out though, the WW2 drama may not have the longest IMAX run of a new film this year as that record could very well be taken by Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two”.
During an IMAX earnings call on Wednesday (transcribed on Seeking Alpha), CEO Richard Gelfond revealed the “Dune” sequel is set to have a “very long run time in IMAX,” as long as five to six weeks, when it opens on November 3rd.
As a result, films opening after like Disney’s “The Marvels” and Lionsgate’s prequel “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” will skip the giant cinema format which could well remain booked out by the sci-fi epic until either “Wonka” or “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” open in mid-late December.
What of those reports last week about the “Dune” makers trying to decide whether to move to 2024? Gelfond dubs them “not true” and “I feel quite strongly that it’s not going to move.” Even if something changes and it has to move, it’s not a problem, says Gelfond:
“There’s another great movie coming out around that time, which is The Marvels from Marvel, and we can’t play it because we are committed to Dune… [if it moves] we’ll just go over to The Marvels, and having a Marvel movie as a backup is not the worst position to be in.”
The “Dune” sequel was filmed with IMAX in mind, thus it gets pride of placement over other titles coming out that month. That November window is also the biggest one the film will ever get and if it moves to 2024, it almost certainly won’t be able to hog IMAX screens for anywhere near that long:
“It was fortuitous that there were no other conflicting projects. But if they were to move that to next year sometime, it’s highly unlikely that they would have that amount of run time. Just to remind you, IMAX was about 20% of the growth on Dune 1.”
He goes so far as to say losing that lucrative IMAX engagement will, from a financial perspective, be worse for Warners than delaying the film until its cast can promote it:
“Dune is already in the midst of a marketing campaign. There are trailers out. There’s lots of materials out. Denis Villeneuve presented at the IMAX CEO Forum. So, it’s kind of out of the gate. If you put it back in the gate, you’ve got to duplicate those expenses at some time in the future.
With no disrespect to Timothee Chalamet, are you going to be able to make up for losing the six-week IMAX release? Are you going to be making up the cost of capital and carrying it for a year? Are you going to move it to an uncertain year when you have no idea what’s going to be put against you when they have virtually no competition right now in the marketplace? It doesn’t really make any sense.”
The “Dune: Part Two” ensemble cast includes Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Charlotte Rampling, and Stephen McKinley Henderson; along with new additions Austin Butler, Christopher Walken, Florence Pugh, Lea Seydoux, and Souheila Yacoub.
“Dune: Part Two” opens only in theaters on November 3rd.
Source: Seeking Alpha
