IMAX 70mm tickets for Dune: Part Three went on sale this morning at 9 a.m. PST, and some screenings sold out within minutes.
The seats are for opening weekend showings, December 17 through December 20, at 19 select theaters worldwide. For now, only one showing is available per theater, at 7 p.m. local time.
Participating locations include four theaters in Los Angeles, two in San Francisco, and single locations in London, Vancouver, New York, Dallas, Miami, and others.
Anyone who purchases an IMAX 70mm ticket in this first wave also receives a limited-edition collectible filmstrip while supplies last, a physical piece of 70mm film from the movie itself.
The film releases December 18, 2026. No word yet on when additional tickets beyond this first wave will be made available.
What Is Dune Part Three Going To Be About?
Dune: Part Three is the final installment of director Denis Villeneuve’s trilogy adapting Frank Herbert’s science fiction saga.
The first two films, Dune: Part One in 2021 and Dune: Part Two in 2024, combined for $1.12 billion at the global box office and earned fifteen Academy Award nominations between them, winning eight Oscars including Best Picture nominations for both.
The franchise is, by any measure, one of the most critically and commercially successful science fiction film series in recent memory.
Part Three is based on Herbert’s 1969 novel Dune Messiah, the second book in the series.
The story picks up roughly 17 years after the events of Part Two. Paul Atreides, Timothée Chalamet, has become Padishah Emperor of the known universe and has married Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh) for political power, but his love for Chani (Zendaya) has not faded.
His religious jihad has spread across the galaxy, and the death toll is staggering.
The film follows Paul as he grapples with the consequences of having too much power while facing an assassination conspiracy assembled by the Bene Gesserit, the Tleilaxu, and forces within his own empire.
Villeneuve described the tonal shift from his previous installments at a press event for the trailer in March. “If the first movie was more of a contemplation, like a boy exploring a new world, and the second one being a war movie, this one is more action-packed and tense,” he said.
Paul, he added, is “dealing with the consequences of having too much power, and he is trying to figure out how to get out of this cycle of violence.”
The Full Dune Three Cast
Timothée Chalamet returns as Paul Atreides. Zendaya returns as Chani, now estranged from Paul after he chose political power over their relationship.
Florence Pugh returns as Princess Irulan, now Paul’s wife. Javier Bardem returns as Stilgar. Josh Brolin returns as Gurney Halleck.
Rebecca Ferguson returns as Lady Jessica, a role Villeneuve had not originally planned to include until he developed an idea that warranted her presence in the story.
The new additions are significant. Robert Pattinson plays Scytale, a Tleilaxu Face Dancer and the film’s primary villain. Anya Taylor-Joy, who appeared briefly in Paul’s visions during Part Two, now steps fully into the story as Alia Atreides, Paul’s younger sister, born with the consciousness of her ancestors already inside her.
Jason Momoa plays Hayt, a ghola, a genetically reconstructed clone, of Duncan Idaho. In a piece of genuine casting poetry, Momoa’s real-life son Nakoa-Wolf Momoa makes his acting debut in the film as Leto II, Paul’s son.
Ida Brooke plays Ghanima. Isaach de Bankolé plays Farok, a Fremen warrior who turns against Paul.
The two women at the center of Part Three represent very different energies. Zendaya’s Chani has left Paul by choice, she watched him become something she didn’t believe in, and walked away.
Her return to the story carries all of that weight. Taylor-Joy’s Alia is one of the stranger characters in Herbert’s universe, born pre-awakened with the memories of countless ancestors inside her, she has never experienced childhood in any conventional sense.
Both characters were set up carefully across the first two films, and Part Three is where they get to fully arrive.
Why Is IMAX 70mm So Special?
Villeneuve filmed parts of Dune: Part Three using IMAX cameras, continuing the visual approach of the previous films.
The IMAX 70mm format delivers the largest possible image quality in theatrical exhibition, roughly ten times the resolution of standard digital projection and the format for which the film was specifically designed during production.
The first wave of tickets being exclusively for 70mm screenings signals that Warner Bros. and Legendary are positioning this as an event film that rewards the biggest possible screen.
The cinematographer this time is Linus Sandgren, replacing Greig Fraser who shot both previous Dune films.
Fraser won Academy Awards for his work on Dune Part One and the film No Time to Die. Sandgren’s own credits include La La Land, Blonde, and No Time to Die, a filmmaker with extensive experience with large-format visual storytelling.
Hans Zimmer, who composed the scores for Parts One and Two, is returning for Part Three.
Production filmed in Budapest and Abu Dhabi from July through November 2025, wrapping in time for a December 2026 release.
The Avengers: Doomsday Situation
Dune: Part Three opens December 18, the same date as Marvel’s Avengers: Doomsday. Both Chalamet and Robert Downey Jr. have floated the idea of calling it “Dunesday,” leaning into the Barbenheimer comparison from the summer of 2023 when Barbie and Oppenheimer opened simultaneously to record-breaking combined results.
Whether Warner Bros. and Marvel’s parent Disney formally embrace that framing remains to be seen, but the collision of two of the most anticipated films of 2026 on the same date is already driving the kind of cultural conversation that benefits both.
The trailer for Dune: Part Three dropped on March 17, 2026, and accumulated more than 8 million views on X within hours.
Tickets going on sale today, more than eight months before the film opens, and selling out within minutes is the clearest possible signal of how much anticipation has built around this finale.
The December 18 date is one of the most valuable release windows in Hollywood, the Friday before Christmas, when families are out of school and studios historically chase the largest possible holiday audience.
Both films opening the same weekend is a genuine gamble for both studios. Avengers: Doomsday marks Robert Downey Jr.’s return to Marvel as Doctor Doom following his original decade-long run as Tony Stark, which ended with Avengers: Endgame in 2019.
The fact that Robert Pattinson appears in both films, as Scytale in Dune and in an undisclosed Marvel role, has added another layer to the online conversation about the date collision.
The spice must flow. Apparently so must the pre-orders.
