Dune: Part Three and Avengers: Doomsday battle for IMAX screens in December

The facts

Warner Bros. and Legendary will release Dune: Part Three on 16 December 2026 in France, according to AlloCiné, and on 18 December in North America, according to IMAX. Directed by Denis Villeneuve and co-written with Brian K. Vaughan, the film takes place almost twenty years after Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) seized power over the Imperium. It adapts Dune Messiah, the first sequel to Frank Herbert’s novel, published in 1969, and IMAX presents it as the conclusion of the saga.

IMAX lays claim to the film’s technical distinction: it is the first instalment of the saga shot partly with the brand’s film cameras, under cinematographer Linus Sandgren, with more than an hour of footage in the expanded format exclusive to its cinemas. The company quotes Villeneuve describing a film “dreamed, designed, and shot” for IMAX.

Avengers: Doomsday, produced by Disney subsidiary Marvel Studios, opens on the same day: 16 December in France, according to Disney France, and 18 December in the United Kingdom and North America. As early as December 2025, AlloCiné was pointing to this 16 December face-off. On 21 September, The Guardian devoted an article to it, nicknaming the event “Dunesday” in an echo of 2023’s “Barbenheimer”. According to TheWrap, Dune: Part Three has secured 400 IMAX screens for three weeks. Disney’s response is called Infinity Vision, a premium-cinema label launched at the end of September with the re-release of Avengers: Endgame, which returned to French cinemas on 23 September under the title Avengers : Endgame Extended.

From Herbert to Villeneuve, sixty years of adaptation

Published in 1965, Dune won the Hugo Award in 1966. The Encyclopædia Britannica estimates that it has sold some 20 million copies, translated into more than 20 languages. Herbert gave it five sequels, from Dune Messiah (1969) to Chapterhouse: Dune (1985), before his death in 1986. The first film adaptation, by David Lynch, dates from 1984.

Villeneuve’s second film set the bar high. According to Box Office Mojo, Dune: Part Two (2024) grossed $714.8 million worldwide, including $82.5 million in its North American opening weekend. France contributed $31.4 million.

What an IMAX screen is worth in December

At IMAX, 70 mm is also a way to sell early. At an investor conference on 9 September, reported by The Hollywood Reporter, IMAX’s chief marketing officer, Anne Globe, said that releasing Dune: Part Three in this format had made it possible to open ticket sales four months before the general release, as with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The Odyssey, shot entirely with IMAX cameras, now holds the box-office record for an IMAX release: $457 million on those screens, including $66 million from 70 mm screenings.

These prints remain rare. For Dune: Part Three, the list published by IMAX includes 25 cinemas with 70 mm in the United States, 9 in Canada and one in Australia, in Melbourne. In Europe, it lists six cinemas, only one of them in France: the Pathé Odysseum in Montpellier, which will show the film in this format from 16 December, according to Hérault Tribune.

On Disney’s side, the constraint stems from the head start Dune secured with IMAX: according to TheWrap, Villeneuve’s film, partly shot with the brand’s cameras, has booked a large share of the screens for its first weeks; Journal du Geek speaks of an exclusivity obtained by Warner Bros. in the United States. Disney France presents Infinity Vision as “a new certification meeting high standards of projection, screen size and sound quality”. TheWrap and Journal du Geek note that it is a label applied to existing cinemas, with no new technology; in France, the screen must be at least 13.75 metres wide, according to Journal du Geek.

What remains to be confirmed

Neither Warner Bros. nor IMAX has published an official count of the IMAX screens booked: the figure of 400 screens and the three-week window come from the trade press. In Europe, IMAX 70 mm ticketing is for now open only for screenings on 15 December, the day before the French release; IMAX mentions additional tickets available “in select European markets”, without specifying them. Finally, no studio has made public a box-office forecast for either film.

Why it matters

Two blockbusters of this size on the same day amount to a real-world test for premium formats, on which IMAX and Disney have each built a commercial strategy. IMAX’s executives present The Odyssey as proof of the soundness of their model; the conclusion of Villeneuve’s trilogy will be their next showcase. For Disney, Avengers: Doomsday will be the film for which Infinity Vision was designed. In France, the duel begins two days before North America, on 16 December, with a single cinema listed for 70 mm, in Montpellier.

Archive note

• Barbie and Oppenheimer, released on the same day in July 2023, took $356 million and $180 million respectively in their worldwide opening weekends (The Guardian).
• Frank Herbert published Heretics of Dune, the fifth instalment of the cycle, in 1984, the very year of David Lynch’s adaptation (Britannica).
• In France, only the Pathé Odysseum in Montpellier will show Dune: Part Three in IMAX 70 mm, from 16 December 2026 (Hérault Tribune).