On May 22, 2025, Disney stunned Marvel fans and movie theater owners alike with a seismic release date shift: “Avengers: Doomsday” and “Avengers: Secret Wars” would not hit the big screen during the coveted summer kickoff slot that propelled the four previous installments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s crossover spectacular into more than $7.5 billion in combined global grosses.
Instead, the two films would move to December 2026 and 2027. And in doing so, “Doomsday” would move right into the lucrative pre-Christmas Dec. 18 release slot already being occupied by Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures with their own blockbuster epic: Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Three.”
At first glance, this potentially sets up a “Barbenheimer”-like phenomenon, the portmanteau used to describe the 2023 pop culture phenomenon that “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” created together with their simultaneous release. Already, the respective leads of “Doomsday” and “Dune 3,” Robert Downey Jr. and Timothee Chalamet, have given their blessing to the meme “Dunesday.”
The difference, of course, is that “Dune” and “Avengers” don’t have the stark contrast in core audiences as those two films, as “Dune: Part Two” and “Avengers: Endgame” had opening weekend male audience shares that were both at least 60%, with a large overlap in their respective core fan base and targeted demographic. That raises the question of whether this decision will lead to an explosive box office with both films coexisting or if the competition will lead to a lower ceiling for both films.
Over the last several months, common thinking was surely one of these films will move, right? They can’t possibly be opening on the same day, right? Wrong. With Warner releasing the first trailer for the sci-fi trilogy capper on Tuesday with the release date front and center — and after securing IMAX exclusivity for its opening weekend — it is clear that both studios are settled in for what could be the most competitive (and for the theaters, hopefully lucrative) holiday box office since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Any number of films can survive during the holidays. It’s a much different market than in the rest of the year,” said Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock. “There’s a lot of free time and I think a lot of traditional focus in going to the movies among the public that time of the year.”
Before the industry-wrecking upheaval in 2020, it was not unusual for the final weeks of the year to be the most loaded segment of the box office calendar. Take 2018, the year in which Disney picked “Mary Poppins Returns” as its holiday offering rather than a “Star Wars” film like the three years prior, opening the door for all the other studios to throw in their competitors. Films like “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” “Bumblebee,” and the $1 billion-plus hit of that season, “Aquaman” flooded theaters and audiences responded in kind.
But since the pandemic, there have been periods where the box office has gone weeks or sometimes months without a hit, and underperforming theaters have been closing left and right as a consequence. Which begs the question: is money being left on the table by Disney and Marvel moving into the holiday season, and can studios and theaters rebuild the moviegoer base enough to make the most out of a holiday season that will be the most packed we’ve seen since 2018?
Premium formats
The most obvious impact that these films opening on the same day will have on the theatrical slate is that for the first time, an “Avengers” film will not be screened on Imax. The world’s biggest premium format is also the only one that plans out its local and global release slates months if not years in advance, and Imax has had a longstanding partnership with “Dune” director Denis Villeneuve.
With his director of photography Greig Fraser, Villeneuve shot the previous two “Dune” films in part with Imax cameras, and “Part Three” DP Linus Sandgren has done the same here. That partnership has contributed to Warner’s success in turning what was once considered an unadaptable sci-fi novel into a mainstream hit, as the studio’s marketing campaign leaned hard into the larger-than-life imagery of Arrakis that demanded to be seen on the biggest screen possible.
And as Warner insiders told TheWrap, the strong response from the fans for “Part Two,” which became Villeneuve’s highest grossing film with $714 million globally, was one of the reasons why the studio never once considered moving “Dune 3” out of its slot after “Avengers” moved in.
With “Part Two” expanding the fanbase for the series and lead stars Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya only further growing their star power since its release — Chalamet in particular has proven his marketability with “Marty Supreme” over the past few months — Warner feels confident that “Dune 3” could exceed the global total of its predecessors even with the relatively more accessible “Avengers” competing directly against it.
As for Disney, insiders at that studio pointed to Warner’s “Barbie” and their own “Lilo & Stitch” remake as two films that grossed more than $1 billion without any Imax support, as those films were boxed out of the format by “Oppenheimer” and “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” respectively. They also plan to push hard to get “Avengers: Doomsday on other premium formats like Dolby, D-Box and 4DX, all of which do not plan their release schedules as far in advance as Imax.
And beyond those formats, there are all of the formats that are specific to individual theater chains such as the recently launched AMC XL. According to theatrical sources, there are 322 chain-specific formats around the world, and Disney plans to get “Avengers” in as many of them as possible to satisfy the growing appetite for seeing the biggest movies on formats where top sound and picture is guaranteed.
The Hedgehog and the Lion
Let’s assume that both “Avengers: Doomsday” and “Dune: Part Three” get strong word of mouth from their respective fanbases on opening weekend, with “Avengers” getting lapsed fans who did not show up for recent films like “Thunderbolts*” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” back onboard and reinvested in the MCU, while “Dune 3” gains buzz as a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy even with the expected deviations from its source material. If that happens, there’s recent precedent for two holiday releases with substantial audience overlap finding box office success alongside each other. In 2024, when Disney’s “Mufasa” and Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” were released at the same time, it looked at first like “Sonic 3” might pull away moviegoers from the “Lion King” prequel after it vastly outperformed its competitor on opening weekend.
But as it turned out, families were simply waiting for Christmas break to begin before seeing “Mufasa,” and Disney enjoyed weeks of turnout even as “Sonic 3” enjoyed solid returns from families and gamers alike.
That’s why one regional theater chain exec who spoke with TheWrap on condition of anonymity is still hopeful that “Avengers” and “Dune” won’t cannibalize each other. The exec said, however, that they would have preferred “Avengers” staying in its usual summer kickoff spot
“I’m a firm believer with tentpole movies that if they build a strong enough audience, that audience is going to find a way to see the movie in theaters even if there’s other movies they want to see on screens at the same time,” he said. “If either of those movies make less than we expect, I think it will be a word-of-mouth issue, not a competition issue. But I’m optimistic that people will like both movies.”
What about the rest?
That said, even if “Avengers: Doomsday” and “Dune: Part Three” get enough in their shared males-over-25 demo to see both films, there is the question of whether other holiday titles might get squeezed out, and if so, who.
Back in 2018, “Bumblebee” was the film that found itself on the outside looking in against “Aquaman” and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” taking in a $468 million gross that was the lowest total for the “Transformers” franchise at the time.
In 2026, the films that will be trying to find their own lane are Sony’s untitled third “Jumanji” film, which will come out a week before “Dune” and “Avengers,” Paramount’s “Angry Birds Movie 3,” which comes out on Dec. 23, and Focus Features’ Christmas feature “Werwulf,” horror director Robert Eggers’ follow-up to his 2024 hit “Nosferatu,” which became one of Focus’ highest grossing films ever with nearly $182 million grossed worldwide.
While “Jumanji” and “Angry Birds” might find some traction with families that have younger kids and are in search of something lighter in tone than the PG-13 “Doomsday,” “Werwulf” will have the challenge of standing out as a gorier R-rated monster film that is being teased as Eggers’ darkest movie yet. “Nosferatu” had the advantage of its main competition being PG-rated movies, as well as the novelty of a non-Christmas-themed horror movie released during the holidays. It may have a harder time getting the attention of adult moviegoers against the latest installment of “Dune” and the “Avengers.”
Bock expressed confidence that Eggers has established himself enough with “Nosferatu” that hardcore horror fans will be enough to make “Werwulf” a hit even if wider audiences are slow to come because of the competition. However, he sees an advantage in moving the film’s wide release to January to get some premium format screens and to position the film as a potential early year horror event title — though that would require Focus’ sister company Universal to move its current placeholder for a Blumhouse horror release on Jan. 15.
“Maybe that film goes limited at Christmas and goes wide in January after some premium formats fill up,” he suggested.
But a second theater executive who spoke to TheWrap said that having a possible excess of holiday releases is a problem worth having, and felt optimistic that the holidays, combined with October and November films like “Street Fighter,” “Godzilla Minus Zero,” “The Cat in the Hat” and “The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping” could lead to domestic fourth quarter total of $2.5 billion or higher. In comparison, the domestic box office rang in $2.18 billion in revenue this past fourth quarter.
“Barbenheimer showed that we are ready for this. Last Memorial Day with ‘Lilo & Stitch’ and ‘Mission: Impossible’ showed we are ready for this,” the exec said. “If both of these movies hold their dates, we could be looking at one of the biggest Christmas Days ever.”
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