Dunesday: Two blockbusters, one release date and the battle for screens

For almost a year and a half, neither studio has budged. On Friday, Dec. 18, 2026, Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Three” and Marvel’s “Avengers: Doomsday” open in the U.S. It pits the finale of the most successful science fiction saga of recent years against the first Avengers movie in seven years: Arrakis versus Doctor Doom, Warner versus Disney. In German-speaking Europe, Dunesday begins even earlier: “Avengers: Doomsday” reaches theaters on Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2026, and in Germany “Dune” follows a day later.

The stars themselves supplied the name for the showdown. Appearing alongside Timothée Chalamet in January 2026, Robert Downey Jr. said that both of them had films opening on Dec. 18 and that they had decided to come up with a name for it. The name they had in mind, he said, was Dunesday. The two did not coin the term, however. The Swiss movie website outnow.ch had already used “Dunesday” in a headline on May 23, 2025, the day after Disney moved its film to December.

Behind the wordplay lies a battle that goes far beyond a single opening weekend. It is about the biggest screens in the world and about whether audiences have grown tired of superheroes. And it is about a movie theater business that has depended on every major event since the pandemic. In Switzerland, too.

How the showdown came about

Warner got there first. As early as June 2024, the studio reserved Dec. 18, 2026, for a then-untitled film by Denis Villeneuve. The title followed in July 2025: “Dune: Part Three,” based on Frank Herbert’s novel “Dune Messiah.” Marvel, by contrast, had scheduled “Avengers: Doomsday” for May 1, 2026. In May 2025, Disney moved the film to Dec. 18, 2026, pitting it against Villeneuve to the very day. At the same time, the sequel “Avengers: Secret Wars” shifted to Dec. 17, 2027.

Why Disney chose that date of all dates has still not been conclusively explained. Speaking to the media in Shanghai in July 2026, Marvel chief Kevin Feige said the studio had been unable to finish the film by May, which is why it had to be moved to December. That statement, however, has come down only through an English translation of Chinese reports. Asked on a podcast whether Marvel was sticking to the date, Feige replied tersely that it definitely was.

Both sides let rumors of a retreat come to nothing. In April 2026, the website KinoCheck reported, citing an insider, that Disney was considering a move to Dec. 11, 2026. Insiders at Warner, by contrast, told the industry site TheWrap that changing the release date had never been even remotely considered. Both studios have now been selling tickets for months. Dunesday is happening.

The battle for the biggest screen

The showdown will be decided not only at the box office but beforehand, in the allocation of auditoriums. The most important currency is premium screens, above all those of IMAX. In 2025, IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond told the broadcaster CNBC that one should think in terms of 20% of revenue, even though IMAX provides less than 1% of screens. According to USA Today, the first two Dune movies together grossed almost $200 million on IMAX screens alone.

This is where Warner made the decisive move. According to USA Today, “Dune: Part Three” will occupy every IMAX auditorium in the U.S. for at least the first three weeks. IMAX itself confirmed the exclusivity for the U.S. opening weekend in a presentation to investors in February 2026. As a result, “Avengers: Doomsday” will not play in a single IMAX auditorium there on its opening weekend. Villeneuve also shot most of his film on 65 mm film, with selected sequences on IMAX film. According to IMAX, it contains 71 minutes in the expanded aspect ratio.

Disney responded with a brand of its own. At the CinemaCon trade show in Las Vegas in April 2026, Disney unveiled Infinity Vision, a quality label for large premium auditoriums with laser projection and Dolby sound, which according to Disney would launch in more than 75 premium auditoriums in North America and 300 worldwide. IMAX was unimpressed. On an April 30, 2026, conference call with analysts, IMAX Chief Financial Officer Natasha Fernandes said the company regarded it as a marketing ploy intended to make up for the fact that Disney has neither an IMAX platform nor an IMAX brand. In September, Disney reported that Infinity Vision auditoriums accounted for 70% of presales to date.

The exclusivity does not apply in Europe. IMAX auditoriums in Germany can show both films. The coveted screenings on genuine 70 mm IMAX film, however, are not available in German-speaking Europe: The list of IMAX theaters showing “Dune” in that format comprises 41 auditoriums, most of them in the U.S. and Canada. In Europe, they are in London, Manchester, Brussels, Prague and Montpellier. No auditorium in Switzerland, Germany or Austria is among them.

Records before the first film opens

The figures already available are extraordinary. According to the trade publication Variety, the first full trailer for “Avengers: Doomsday” was viewed 503 million times in its first 24 hours. Only “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” did better, with 719 million. Presales began in July and brought in $16.5 million on the first day. Disney Chief Financial Officer Hugh Johnston told an investor conference in September that, with the film still three months away, presales had already reached $50 million. In Germany, according to the website netzwelt.de, about 118,000 tickets were sold on the first day of presales, more than for “Avengers: Endgame” in 2019. The website does not say where the figure comes from.

“Dune” is countering with scarcity. When Warner released the first tickets for the 70 mm screenings in April, the opening-weekend shows sold out within hours, eight months before the film’s release. According to USA Today, prices of up to $2,500 appeared on the resale market. During the second wave of sales on Aug. 18, 2026, fans reported that the apps of AMC, the largest U.S. theater chain, and of the ticketing site Fandango crashed at times. AMC CEO Adam Aron wrote on X that the company had thought it was ready, but it was not.

Superhero fatigue or comeback?

Marvel has more at stake than Warner. After the record set by “Avengers: Endgame” in 2019, a long dry spell began. “The Marvels” grossed only $206 million worldwide in 2023, a debacle for a film with a budget of $270 million. The three Marvel movies of 2025, “Captain America: Brave New World,” “Thunderbolts*” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” brought in about $1.32 billion combined, less than “Deadpool & Wolverine” made on its own the year before. In May 2025, Disney CEO Bob Iger conceded that Marvel had spread itself too thin. Disney was convinced, he said, that consolidating somewhat and having Marvel focus far more on its films would lead to better quality.

Then came the summer of 2026. “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” grossed $360 million in the U.S. on its opening weekend, more than any film before it. Worldwide, it now stands at more than $2.5 billion. “Endgame” is also back on top: After a rerelease in September, the database The Numbers once again lists the film as the highest-grossing movie of all time, with $2.94 billion, just ahead of “Avatar.” The talk of superhero fatigue has grown quieter. Whether it falls silent will be decided by “Doomsday.”

Marvel is banking on the familiar. Robert Downey Jr., whose Tony Stark died in “Endgame,” returns as the villain Doctor Doom. Chris Evans is back as Steve Rogers, joined by veterans of the old X-Men films such as Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. Directing once again are Anthony and Joe Russo, who also made “Endgame.” Anthony Russo told The Associated Press in September that they never want to rest on existing capital. The film’s greatest value, he said, should lie in what is new.

Villeneuve’s farewell to Arrakis

Warner is entering the race with a different promise: large-format auteur cinema. According to Box Office Mojo, “Dune” grossed about $408 million worldwide in 2021, even though the film was streaming in the U.S. at the same time. “Dune: Part Two” reached about $715 million in 2024, an increase of 75%. The third installment adapts the novel “Dune Messiah”: Paul Atreides rules as emperor, and his holy war has devastated the universe. Conspirators are plotting his downfall. At a fan event in July, Villeneuve said the film was more of a thriller, a more intense story and definitely a more emotional one as well.

For Villeneuve, it is a farewell with mixed feelings. He was returning to Arrakis not out of nostalgia, he told the British film magazine Empire in October, but because he had had enough of it. Once it was finished, he said, he would need a very powerful rocket to pull him away from Arrakis. He has found that rocket: Villeneuve will next direct the new James Bond film. A piquant side note concerns Florence Pugh. She appears in both dueling films, as Princess Irulan in “Dune” and as the agent Yelena Belova in the Marvel film.

Barbenheimer, but different

The comparison is an obvious one. On July 21, 2023, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” opened on the same day. Instead of stealing audiences from each other, both became global hits. According to The Numbers, “Barbie” grossed about $1.45 billion worldwide and “Oppenheimer” just under $1 billion. Many moviegoers saw both films, often on the same day. What used to be considered a strategic taboo had become a marketing opportunity, said analyst Paul Dergarabedian of the data provider Comscore.

That does not make Dunesday a sure thing. Barbenheimer was a study in contrast: a colorful comedy against a three-hour historical drama shot partly in black and white. This time, two science fiction spectacles collide, both courting a similar audience that skews young and male. Dergarabedian called it quite a gamble and a bold move by both studios to stick with the same date. Movie industry expert Jeff Bock sees Warner at an advantage: In this case, he said, “Dune” is going into battle already in control of the terrain.

What Dunesday means for Swiss movie theaters

In Switzerland, the showdown comes at an opportune time. According to preliminary figures from the industry association ProCinema, the country’s movie theaters sold 9.8 million tickets in 2025, 8% fewer than the year before. Ticket revenue fell 6% to about 160 million Swiss francs. Compared with 10 years ago, admissions are down about 30%. ProCinema’s managing director, Ivette Djonova, attributed the decline to a thinner supply of mainstream American films, according to the Swiss public broadcaster SRF. The three most successful films of the year were “Zootopia 2,” “Lilo & Stitch” and “Avatar: Fire and Ash.”

That makes big Hollywood movies vital to the survival of Swiss theaters. In December, two of them arrive at once. As early as March 2026, an American exhibitor summed up the industry’s hopes for a densely packed movie year: Chris Randleman of the FlixBrewhouse chain told the website Variety India that they had been desperately waiting for volume all these years. Now the volume was here, he said, and it was the best possible scenario. For Swiss moviegoers, the showdown has an advantage that Americans do not have: Because the IMAX exclusivity does not apply in Europe, large auditoriums in Switzerland are likely to show both films. By press time, Swiss theater chains had not fully announced which auditoriums would play which film in which format.

Timeline: The road to Dunesday

Arena: Who will win Dunesday?

Commentary: Cinema needs more showdowns like this

For a long time, releasing two major productions on the same day was considered suicide in Hollywood. Dunesday shows how much things have changed. The studios are no longer fighting each other for audiences; they are fighting the couch together. Every presales record is proof that people are still willing to leave the house for an experience if it is big enough.

What is troubling is something else. The fight over IMAX auditoriums shows how much power is now concentrated in a small number of screens. Whoever locks up the biggest auditoriums early enough helps decide who wins the weekend before a single review has appeared. That Disney has conjured up a brand of its own out of thin air with Infinity Vision is an understandable reaction, but it is also a sign that movie theaters are becoming a playing field for the conglomerates.

For audiences, Dunesday is a win nonetheless. They get two films made with ambition and enormous effort instead of a string of interchangeable sequels. Swiss movie theaters, which lost nearly one in 12 moviegoers in 2025, need exactly this kind of event. Who wins is secondary. What matters is that the auditoriums are full again in December.

All figures as of Oct. 19, 2026. Box office grosses are nominal, in dollars, according to The Numbers and Box Office Mojo. Trailer view counts are based on media reports and on figures from the providers. Forecasts by insiders and prediction markets are uncertain. A Swiss release date for “Dune: Part Three” had not been published by press time. Statements originally made in English are paraphrased. Sources are cited in their original language.

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Sources

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