The conclusion to Denis Villeneuve’s epic Dune trilogy is still four months away, but the anticipation was palpable on Tuesday, the first day of ticket presales.
Theater chain apps suffered apparent outages as moviegoers waited in long virtual lines, hoping to finally glimpse a seat map with some empty spots left on it. In Manhattan, those who have grown mistrustful of this unreliable tech found time on a weekday morning to line up around the block at AMC Lincoln Square—hours before the box office opened. It was the third frenzied rush for blockbuster tickets in a few short weeks, following sky-high demand for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and Destin Daniel Cretton’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
Customers have been particularly keen to see these films on IMAX screens, with Dune: Part Three and The Odyssey also available in the even more exclusive IMAX 70mm format. Only 25 theaters in the US are capable of showing a film this way.
While directors and studios have embraced such premium screenings for tentpole releases (not least because those tickets are more expensive), the rarity of theaters equipped for them has contributed to a scarcity mindset. People are so bent on experiencing these movies in the “best” possible way, and, if not on opening night, as soon after as possible, that ticket resellers have attempted to auction them off for hundreds of dollars, while some cinephiles have embarked on Homeric journeys to IMAX theaters multiple states away.
As such, this week’s competition for Dune: Part Three tickets renewed a feeling of stress and weariness among fans of Hollywood spectacle. Why, some asked, does catching a movie now feel as difficult as scoring tickets to a red-hot concert tour?
Adam Aron, CEO of AMC Theatres, took to his X account to apologize for the latest cinematic frustrations. (Reached for comment, the company directed WIRED to his comments on the platform.) “We thought we were ready, but we weren’t,” he wrote of the Dune launch, noting that the traffic surge to AMC’s website and mobile app was about triple the volume they’d seen for the latest Spider-Man installment.
“It’s a high-class problem to have such staggering demand, but even so it is intolerable and inexcusable,” Aron wrote. He further announced that $2 million in IT costs had been approved in order to “fully address the issue.”
Fandango and Regal Cinemas, whose apps and websites also drew complaints amid ongoing glitches, did not immediately return requests for comment. A representative for IMAX, which is not involved in ticket sales, declined to comment on the record. IMAX currently has more than 1,800 locations worldwide; in a quarterly financial update earlier this year, CEO Rich Gelfond said they saw the potential to double their footprint.
This depends, however, on exhibitors actively investing in more IMAX venues, as well as the availability of new or retrofitted auditoriums big enough for the screens and the theater architecture that goes along with them.
In the meantime, customer exasperation is mounting. Internet film critics bemoaned the “concertification” of movies as they contended with the same overloaded apps and long lines as everyone else.
“I’m done with the shenanigans of trying to be ‘FIRST’ to see these blockbuster films,” Simone Cromer, once known for her “Club Chalamet” fan accounts devoted to Dune star Timothée Chalamet, wrote on X. “I’ll watch it on a regular screen sometime that week, without having to travel too far.”