Denis Villeneuve’s concluding sci-fi chapter Dune: Part Three has shattered the 24-hour advance presale record at London’s BFI IMAX, moving 33,000 tickets to generate £880,000 ($1.2 million) in first-day receipts.

The total overtakes the previous venue benchmark established earlier this year by Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which logged £750,000 ($1 million) in its first 24 hours. The landmark single-screen haul also more than doubles the first-day performance of 2024’s Dune: Part Two (£366,000), outpacing Nolan’s Oppenheimer (£254,000) and James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash (£116,000).

The surge in demand follows three opening weekend screenings that sold out within an hour in April, alongside sold-out early preview engagements scheduled for mid-December. The British Film Institute will project Villeneuve’s trilogy capper on an authentic IMAX 70mm celluloid print, a presentation format that drove historic turnouts for the theater during The Odyssey’s record-setting £219,867 ($296,147) opening weekend in July.

Adapting Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah, Part Three leaps forward nearly two decades from the events of the 2024 sequel. The narrative follows Emperor Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) grappling with the catastrophic geopolitical fallout of his holy war, impending Imperial collapse, and a complex conspiracy tied to the reappearance of Chani (Zendaya).

The ensemble cast features returning stars Florence Pugh, Jason Momoa, Anya Taylor-Joy, Javier Bardem, and Josh Brolin, joined by franchise newcomer Robert Pattinson. Warner Bros. and Legendary Entertainment will release Dune: Part Three in theaters and IMAX on December 18, 2026.