The summer box office season draws to a close, and the half-life of the nuclear explosion that was Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey will continue to cause that ominous clicking sound on your cinematic Geiger counter for quite some time. You know what else is ominous? The pre-sales data coming in for Avengers: Doomsday.
Spider-Man lost all the IMAX screens to The Odyssey, and that pattern is set to repeat for Avengers: Doomsday vs. Dune Part 3 as part of the fan-dubbed Dunesday event in December. That hasn’t slowed Spider-Man down one little bit.
Both Disney and Warner Bros. Pictures will be looking at Spider-Man and The Odyssey and hoping for more of the same when their turn comes.
Disney will be enthusiastic, as this past weekend they opened up full advance ticket sales for Avengers: Doomsday. This was an unprecedented four months in advance. This was also a second tranche as premium format presales on 1,000 screens were already released following Comic Con.
Disney’s way-out-from-start hype machine is clearly working, as The Wrap now reports that Avengers: Doomsday is approximately 65% ahead of where pre-sales for Spider-Man: Brand New Day were at the same point (2 days) of sales , and that was about 1-2 months ahead of release, not 4+ months. If these trajectories continue, then Avengers: Doomsday is going to be absolutely huge.
Could we finally see Avatar de-throned as the biggest movie of all time? Or does the cinematic landscape of now vs. 2009 mean that chance has passed forever?
Meanwhile, IMAX 70mm screenings of Dune Part 3 that were offered early have already sold out the opening weekends.
After spending this summer feeling doom and gloom over the state of the box office after a series of high-profile flops and failures, it looks as if this year is going to be finishing with a flourish. The concentration of success into one or two key franchises will still be of concern for movie fans, but studios will happily take this money and laugh all the way to the bank.
