Have movie ticket presales spiraled out of control?

Hey there, Popculturology readers. Welcome to the latest edition of the Friday newsletter.

There’s a ton of news to discuss — all of Disney’s reveals from D23, a new trailer for Whalefall, the Dune: Part Three ticket presale — but I first need to ask you all if anyone has had any luck finding the entire series of Hello Kitty x Godzilla Happy Meal toys. Our daughter has four Hello Kitty x Godzilla toys! We need Kuromi x Mechagodzilla ...

How many months in advance should movie tickets go on sale?

I love that in 2026, I can buy advance tickets on my phone for an upcoming movie. I don’t have to wait in line. I don’t have to make the mad dash for the back row. I don’t have to worry about getting stuck at the front of the theater.

But can we please stop launching this process four months, five months — or even a year! — before a movie is set to premiere?

Dune: Part Three was the latest film to send fans scrambling for tickets months in advance this week, with tickets for Tuesday preview screenings and the first full weekend of shows going on sale on Tuesday. Let’s just say the process did not go smoothly.

It took me more than 45 minutes, my computer and my phone to finally secure a ticket for one of those showings. The app repeatedly crashed. The AMC and Fandango websites had digital queues that cycled back on themselves or never advanced. Payments wouldn’t go through. Pages timed out.

“Ticketing traffic across AMC’s website and mobile app reached levels approximately three times higher than what we experienced during the Spider-Man: Brand New Day ticket launch, which itself followed strong advance sales for The Odyssey ticket launch before that,” AMC Theatres CEO Adam Aron wrote on social media Tuesday afternoon. “It’s not that our systems totally failed. 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.”

Read into this however you might, but when tickets went on sale last month for Avengers: Doomsday, systems didn’t crash. I bought mine without an issue. Should Disney be worried about Warner Bros.’s third and final Dune movie?

That box office pressure shouldn’t be trickling down to fans. No one wants to try to see a movie opening weekend only to discover that some of the best tickets sold out a year before. That’s what happened with 70mm IMAX shows for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.

“They should not be selling movie tickets a year early or six months early or any of this stupid shit,” Film Nerd 2.0 founder Drew McWeeny wrote on Tuesday. “Two weeks before the date of the film at the most. Making it impossible to see something opening weekend a half a year before that weekend is not encouraging people to go to the movies.”

The false scarcity hyped up by these early ticket releases, driven by the exclusivity of things like 70mm IMAX, has even created a secondary market of scalpers. Yes, people are buying 80 tickets at once for Dune: Part Three with the sole intention of flipping them.

I don’t know if there’s a way this ever gets scaled back to normal. Like how midnight screenings turned into 10 p.m. Thursday shows which turned into a full slate of Tuesday times, if Warner Bros. and Disney can sell out an opening weekend half a year before a movie opens, why would they sacrifice that guarantee?

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised when tickets for Avengers: Secret Wars go on sale the weekend Avengers: Doomsday opens.

‼️ THE BIG STORIES

Disney shines the spotlight on its kingdom

The annual D23 showcase took place at the end of last week, giving Disney the chance to update fans on everything from Marvel to Star Wars to animation to live action. Here’s what you might have missed:

• Marvel Studios: We got a fantastic new Avengers: Doomsday trailer, the cast reveal for X-Men and the first trailer for VisionQuest.
  • Now for some homework: Disney+ curated a “Countdown to Avengers: Doomsday” collection, highlighting 15 movies and TV shows. Is it a good sign for how the Multiverse Saga went when Disney skips most of the projects released since Avengers: Endgame and instead includes a movie released in 2000? (Disney+)
  • Mark it down: Disney also officially put Ryan Gosling’s Ghost Rider on the calendar, scheduling it for July 28, 2028. The film joins X-Men on May 5, 2028, Black Panther III on Dec. 15, 2028, and mystery films on May 4, 2029, July 13, 2029, and Nov. 9, 2029. (Comic Book Club)
  • Gotta wonder, man: “I think the optics are obvious,” Yahya Abdul-Mateen II told Vanity Fair about the cancelation of Wonder Man. “If I’m a big business, if I’m Disney, if I’m Marvel, I don’t want to be attached to these optics.” (Vanity Fair)
• The Bluey Movie: The first trailer for the highly anticipated The Bluey Movie debuted at D23 ... and with it came the shocker that the animation style had shifted from the beloved 2D to a 3D style reminiscent of The Peanuts Movie.
  • Wait, is it a bad idea? Um, why are so many of the comments on the Instagram post revealing a new poster for The Bluey Movie focused on the rumor that the film is going to introduce cats? (Disney)