Dune 3 Ticket Controversy Feels Like A Bad Sign For The Future
The excitement to return to Arrakis also exposes some issues with the state of movie ticket sales.
Six years onward, it’s easy to take for granted just what a devastating blow to the theatrical experience the 2020 lockdowns were. Everything almost immediately dried up an industry that had just come off a record-shattering year in 2019, and the widespread and necessary adoption of streaming as a theatrical alternative (especially in the case of Warner Bros’ and HBO Max’s hybrid release model, which affected films like The Suicide Squad and Dune: Part One) was a shift theaters still haven’t quite recovered from. But with 2026 so far appearing like a return to form, due to movies as small as Obsession and as massive as Spider-Man: Brand New Day, one would think it’s officially safe to say “theaters are back.”
And while it’s a massive gamble to say whether that’s true or not, what can be said with certainty is that the theatrical experience is forever changed. Although the introduction of subscriptions like AMC Stubs and Regal Unlimited has undoubtedly made trips to the theater more convenient and less expensive for those with them, ticket prices continue to balloon, which has made theatergoing a more exclusive experience and has also led to the kind of premium ticket scrambling and scalping that plagued Christopher Nolan’s billion-dollar box-office smash The Odyssey. Now the exact same chaos has unfolded with regard to the pre-sales for the upcoming Dune: Part Three, and the intensity of the problem pokes at persistent questions about the future of the theater experience that feel overlooked by all the celebration about 2026.
How nice of Denis to include a scene in the movie that represents the feeling of trying to buy tickets for an early screening.
Where Did All The Joy Go?
After the first round of IMAX early screening tickets sold out back in April, Dune: Part 3 once again began selling pre-order tickets on August 18 for advanced screenings. Those screenings won’t be happening until December 14 and 15 (three days before the film’s wide release), but that hasn’t stopped the internet from collectively losing its mind in pursuit of them. Twitter and other social media platforms were filled with horror stories of unbearable ticket queues and even apps crashing under pressure, and that’s not even to mention the real-life nightmare of scalpers buying 80 tickets at a time while genuine fans languished trying to get even one.
It’s almost impossible to imagine, but there was a time when this pandemonium wasn’t the case. In the days of the 70s through the 90s, when blockbusters weren’t quite the financial bedrock of the industry the way they are now, theatergoers used to have to wait in lines and sometimes even camp out before a screening to buy tickets; even in the early 2000s, when digital sales were becoming prominent, you’d still have to wait to claim the seats you wanted. There was a sense of camaraderie to camping out for hours just to get tickets for The Phantom Menace in 1999, or seeing The Dark Knight on opening night. Yes, scapplers existed then, too, but for the most part, you were in line with other fans who were there for no reason other than sheer dedication.
The anticipation for The Dark Knight in 2008 is impossible to overstate, but somehow it felt decidedly different from the scramble over tickets we see now.
Early Ticket Chaos Is A Sign Of The Times
That charm has sadly been replaced by a cynicism born out of exclusivity and greed. Filmmakers are increasingly shooting in large formats like IMAX 70mm, and while the value is evident on-screen, there are only 41-45 theaters in the world (and 25 in the States) that can properly screen the format – which means people are going to be fighting over seats, and as The Odyssey has recently shown, that fight will continue long after opening weekend. On top of the desperation felt by regular people competing to see a film in the intended way, unless platforms like AMC and Fandango become more vigilant, the reality of people buying dozens of tickets just to resell them for thousands of dollars will become a more common practice until ticket presales for the next Avengers movie start to resemble the free-for-all on Ticketmaster over a Taylor Swift concert.
Unfortunately, theater subscriptions aren’t helping the problem of exclusivity either – while they’re undoubtedly a great idea and have been instrumental in the steady rise of theater attendance since the lockdowns, they also serve as a bit of a justification to continue raising ticket prices in an effort to push people to subscribe. It’s a situation that’s only going to get more unbearable if AMC goes through with plans to introduce “preferred premiere seating,” which would allow A-List and Stubs subscribers first dibs on the best seats in the theater; essentially, anyone who still buys movie tickets the old fashioned way will eventually have to scramble for whatever scrap seats are left after A-List members and scalpers are done pillaging. It’s exciting to watch the uproar over high-quality blockbusters like The Odyssey and Dune: Part 3, and it’s an understandable instinct to be excited about movie theaters being “back,” but it’s worth considering if they’re back for everyone or only a select, privileged elite.
