Denis Villeneuve’s finale sold 33,000 tickets in a single day at London’s biggest screen — and took down The Odyssey’s record doing it.
Records usually fall after a movie opens. Dune: Part Three just broke one two months early. The BFI IMAX in London — the largest screen in the UK — sold 33,000 advance tickets for the film in its first 24 hours on sale, grossing more than £880,000 and setting a new first-day presale record for the venue, per Screen Rant, reporting figures first reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
The name it pushed aside matters. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey held the mark at £750,000, and that film went on to become the venue’s highest-grossing title ever. Behind it on the venue’s all-time first-day list sit Dune: Part Two at £366,000, Oppenheimer at £254,000, and Avatar: Fire and Ash at £116,000, per Screen Rant. Part Three did not just edge the record — it more than doubled its own predecessor.
Why one screen tells a bigger story
A single venue is not the global box office, and nobody should pretend otherwise. But BFI IMAX has become the canary for event-movie demand: scarce seats, 70mm presentations, and audiences willing to book months ahead. Per Screen Rant, Warner Bros. has also secured an exclusive IMAX window for the film, which means rival December releases cannot screen in that format for three weeks — a structural advantage no marketing spend can buy.
The film itself closes Denis Villeneuve‘s trilogy, adapted from Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah. It is set nearly two decades after Timothée Chalamet‘s Paul Atreides seized control of the Imperium, with Paul facing the consequences of his reign as old allies return and a conspiracy closes in, per Warner Bros.’ synopsis for the official trailer. Zendaya returns as Chani, alongside Florence Pugh, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jason Momoa, Rebecca Ferguson and Robert Pattinson. It opens December 18, 2026 — the same day as Avengers: Doomsday, per multiple reports.
That shared date is the real context here. December 18 is shaping up as a genuine split-screen weekend: one giant in IMAX, one giant everywhere else. Presales like this suggest audiences are not choosing between them so much as booking both — and booking the premium screen first, while it still exists.
The 247 Take — A presale record at one London screen does not guarantee a billion dollars, but it does prove intent: Villeneuve’s audience plans its December around this film, in the biggest format available. That is the definition of an event movie before a single review lands.
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Sources: Screen Rant; CBR
