‘Dune: Part Three’ Presales Crash AMC’s Website, Tracking for Eye-Watering Domestic Opening

Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Dune‘ trilogy has spent years building toward a genuine box office phenomenon, and the numbers suggest that momentum has never been stronger heading into the franchise’s grand finale. Every presale wave for the concluding chapter has managed to top the last, turning what would normally be a routine ticketing rollout into a recurring event of its own.

That pattern held true once again this week as Warner Bros. and Legendary opened the widest wave of ‘Dune: Part Three’ presales yet, covering IMAX 70mm, digital IMAX, Dolby Cinema, and the rest of the premium large format tier all at once. It marked the third separate presale rollout for the film this year, following an earlier April wave that sold out its entire allotment of IMAX 70mm screenings within minutes.

That demand proved too much for ticketing infrastructure to handle. AMC’s app and website buckled almost immediately once the wider presale window opened, with fans reporting hour-long digital queues, rate-limit errors, and crashes during checkout, prompting AMC CEO Adam Aron to acknowledge the disruptions publicly.

“We have been selling enormous numbers of tickets today, but when any of our customers experience less than our best, it is just not right,” Aron said, adding that the company had underestimated demand despite internal preparation ahead of the ticket launch. He noted that AMC has approved roughly $2 million in IT resources to address the ongoing ticketing issues.

With presale momentum continuing to build, industry analysts are increasingly confident that ‘Dune: Part Three’ is on track to become the first entry in the franchise to cross $100 million domestically on opening weekend. Current tracking estimates place the film’s opening in the range of $125 million or higher, a figure that would comfortably surpass ‘Dune: Part Two’s’ $82.5 million domestic debut back in 2024.

That trajectory reflects a franchise that’s grown substantially with each new installment. The original ‘Dune’ opened to a more modest start in 2021 before finishing with $410 million worldwide, while ‘Dune: Part Two’ more than doubled that total, closing out its run with $714 million globally in 2024.

Some analysts have cautioned that the app crashes and long queues reflect ticketing infrastructure limitations as much as pure demand, though the broader trend still points toward the strongest opening in franchise history. Regardless of how the final numbers shake out, ‘Dune: Part Three’ is positioned to significantly outperform its predecessors right out of the gate.

Much of the presale intensity ties directly to the film’s shared release date with Marvel’s ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ on December 18, a pairing fans have dubbed “Dunesday.” ‘Dune: Part Three’ has secured exclusive access to domestic IMAX screens for its opening weeks, since the film was partially shot using IMAX cameras, leaving ‘Doomsday’ to rely on other premium formats like Dolby Cinema instead.

That format exclusivity has added extra urgency to the presale rollout, with Warner Bros. treating each new ticket wave as its own marketing event complete with fresh trailer footage timed to the on-sale window. The pattern mirrors a similar frenzy earlier this year around Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey,’ which also overwhelmed AMC’s website during its own advance ticket rollout before going on to become the highest-grossing IMAX release in history.

With December still four months away and presale numbers already breaking records at nearly every checkpoint, ‘Dune: Part Three’ looks increasingly poised to deliver the biggest opening weekend the franchise has ever seen. Whether that momentum holds once general ticket sales fully open remains to be seen, but for now, the demand alone has already made headlines well before a single frame has played in theaters.

Have something to add? Let us know in the comments!