Regal Cinema charges $50 for Dune: Part Three opening night
Regal Cinema has put opening-night tickets for Dune: Part Three on sale at $50 for a premium seat. The move lands before the film premieres on December 18, and it arrives as premium pricing is taking a larger share of the box office.
Greg Marcus on ticket pricing
Greg Marcus said theaters need enough films and should not be asked to invest more or cut prices without a decent return. “Give us enough films, If you're not going to let us earn a decent return, don't ask me to invest more or cut my prices.”
The quote fits the moment. Premium-format theaters such as IMAX and 4DX accounted for 17% of ticket sales in 2025, up from 13% in 2021, while the national average price for premium-format tickets sits at $18.
IMAX 70mm sells out fast
Some opening-weekend screenings for Dune: Part Three in IMAX 70mm sold out within minutes. That kind of demand is the friction point here: theaters are pushing higher-priced seats while audiences still have a cheaper baseline option in the $12.75 regular average ticket.
AMC had 517 premium-format theaters at the end of 2025, a 30% increase since 2021. AMC also adds a surcharge of up to $2 a ticket for popular films on their opening weekends, and premium-format tickets can reach $30 in bigger cities.
Premium seats now drive revenue
In 2019, more than 1.2 billion movie tickets were sold in the U.S. and Canada; in 2025, that total fell to 769.2 million. Against that backdrop, theaters are leaning harder on premium seating and on spending outside the auditorium.
Adam Aron said AMC ticket holders spend $9 on average at the concession stand, compared with $5 before the pandemic, and he described that as “more money per patron than we made prior to Covid”. Spending on concessions and merchandise has grown 220% over the last 20 years, so the premium seat is no longer the only lever theaters are pulling.
For buyers, the practical choice is simple: pay the $50 premium now for opening night or wait for a standard showing later. For exhibitors, the early sellouts suggest that premium pricing has room to stretch further on marquee titles like Dune: Part Three.
