On July 20, premium ticket sales for the blockbuster "Avengers: Doomsday" began, and the initial results have already set a record among Disney films. In the first 24 hours, the movie earned $16.5 million in presales.
This is almost twice the opening figure for "Deadpool & Wolverine," which grossed $8.4 million in its first day of presales and later earned over $1.3 billion worldwide.
The result looks even more significant given the fierce competition. "Avengers: Doomsday" has no IMAX screenings whatsoever: the entire network has been exclusively booked for three weeks in advance by Denis Villeneuve's third installment of "Dune," which is released on the same day – December 18. Because of this, Disney had to implement its own new quality standard for premium theaters – Infinity Vision.
Furthermore, tickets are currently only available in approximately 1000 premium cinemas, whereas by the time of its full release, the film will be shown on more than 4000 screens in North America.
Despite the limitations, evening screenings for the first few days of release are already completely sold out in most cities. Cinema chains are adding late-night showings and additional screenings for the Christmas holidays.
Analysts expect the weekend of December 18 to be one of the most profitable in cinematic history. The simultaneous release of "Avengers: Doomsday" and the third part of "Dune" has already received the unofficial name "Doomsday Dune" – by analogy with "Barbenheimer," when Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" and "Barbie" were released on the same day.