If you tried to buy Dune: Part Three presale tickets on Tuesday, you probably walked away empty-handed and frustrated. The AMC app and website crashed under heavy demand, Fandango queues were buggy, and scalpers reportedly grabbed up to 80 tickets per person. With only 25 theaters in the U.S. showing the film in IMAX 70mm, the most coveted format, seats disappeared within minutes. AMC CEO Adam Aron issued an apology and committed $2 million to platform improvements, but for many fans, the damage is already done.
This isn’t an isolated incident. The same frenzy happened earlier this year for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, and fans are starting to draw comparisons to the Ticketmaster concert monopoly. When limited formats combine with bot-powered scalpers, regular moviegoers get priced out or locked out entirely. The article notes that this“Ticketmasterization”could push frustrated fans toward piracy or simply waiting for streaming, which would hurt theaters in the long run.
The irony is that all this chaos comes from deep passion. People genuinely want to see Denis Villeneuve’s finale on the biggest screen possible, especially with 71 minutes of IMAX-exclusive expanded-aspect-ratio footage. But when passion meets scarcity and scalpers, everyone loses. So what’s the fix? Should theaters cap ticket purchases? Should they crack down harder on resellers? Or is this just the new reality of must-see events? Let us know what you think.
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Local Lawton
Local Lawton is a contributor to LocalBeat, covering local news and community stories.