JULY 30, 2026

Welcome back to Buffering, where we’re trying to take our minds off of the July heat by focusing on the fact that pumpkin spice and other fall beverages are expected to start showing up in Dunkin’ stores in less than three weeks, with Starbucks not far behind. As for this week’s newsletter, I’ve been doing some reporting for an upcoming story, but my colleague Eric Vilas-Boas surveyed a slew of industry analysts to see how the box office battle between Avengers: Doomsday and Dune 3 on December 18 — or, as the kids are calling it, “Dunesday” — will play out. Keeping with our movie-centric theme, we’ve also got Lane Brown’s report on the real reason some of you are paying so much to see movies in Imax. And as always, we kick things off with our Briefering section. Thanks for reading. 

 —Joe Adalian

In this edition: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Kevin Feige, Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Christopher Nolan, and two Florence Pugh blockbusters out the same day.

For a few months, Marvel’s newest live-action TV show was renewed following its January debut this year, but that was too good to last. The Yahya Abdul-Mateen II–led Disney+ series about an underemployed actor with super strength and explosive powers has been canceled, Variety reports today. Cutting the show leaves only VisionQuest and the third season of Daredevil: Born Again as the last live-action TV projects left on Marvel’s ledger. Foreboding, perhaps? More on Marvel below. —Eric Vilas-Boas

In 2024, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige came on the Hall H stage and announced Robert Downey Jr. would be Doctor Doom in the next two Avengers movies — a new big bad taking over Jonathan Majors’s Kang the Conqueror after the studio fired him. The news of Downey’s return to the MCU was seismic on the ground while inspiring a myriad of takes on the state of Marvel since. It didn’t help that amidst that announcement, the MCU had been on a downturn with franchises ending (like Guardians of the Galaxy), new heroes struggling to upstart their own string of films (Eternals, Shang-Chi), and even the better Marvel films of the past decade (Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four: First Steps) have realized they might have to get used to a more comfortable — versus overachieving — box-office return.

But with Avengers: Doomsday heading up against Dune: Part 3 this December, Feige brought every trick (well, actor) he could for the studios’ reemergence in San Diego this evening. Thousands of fans — treated with Doctor Doom masks and capes — waited nearly days to get a glimpse of Feige’s grand plan for the next era of the MCU. There was no Multiverse Saga-level announcement of years to come; Feige chose to eschew from any television updates (sorry, VisionQuest) in favor of some movie casting news. We rounded up the main takeaways from Marvel’s homecoming panel…. —Savannah Salazar

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Pretty soon, you’ll be able to watch The Traitors and Love Island USA on YouTube — if you already pay extra for YouTube Premium, that is. NBCUniversal and YouTube have announced a new global partnership that will bundle Peacock programming — its shows, live sports, and movies — onto the Alphabet-owned platform starting in early 2027. Next year, subscribers to YouTube Premium (the video platform’s ad-free subscription tier) will get complimentary access to Peacock Premium (the streaming service’s ad-supported and most-popular subscription tier). The Peacock Premium stuff on YouTube Premium will be ad-supported, just as it is on Peacock Premium proper. YouTube Premium users who don’t want to watch Peacock stuff with ads will also have the option to upgrade to the ad-free tier, Peacock Premium Plus, on YouTube.

Still with me? The bundle represents a pretty interesting development for users. The companies are positioning this as “seamless access to Peacock within the YouTube experience.” It promises to include all of the TV shows and films available on Peacock — licensed programming as well as NBCU franchises like The Real Housewives, Law & Order, and Wicked — plus access to its major sports offerings, including the NFL, Olympics, NBA, and more. This is the six-year-old streamer’s largest overall distribution deal yet. But the partnership goes beyond the specific bundle and its offerings…. —Eric Vilas-Boas

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By Eric Vilas-Boas

Left: Chris Evans in Avengers: Doomsday; right: Florence Pugh in Dune: Part Three. (She’s also in Doomsday.) 

To invoke the very Marvel story line that inspired its upcoming pair of Avengers movies: Everything dies eventually. That includes Marvel Studios’ box-office dominance — it’s only a question of when.

In the week leading up to Comic-Con, as the industry buzzed over how well Christopher Nolan’s practical-filmmaking showcase The Odyssey was doing at the box office, Marvel unveiled its official trailer for Avengers: Doomsday, teasing a chintzy gray three-hour team-up that enlists dozens of returning heroes in an attempt to rescue the studio from superhero fatigue. Marvel isn’t cooked yet — there’s a well-reviewed new Spider-Man title out this week that will make gobs of money — but the success of Avengers is business-critical; to many fans and industry observers, the sub-franchise is synonymous with the MCU. And while that trailer has racked up over 54 million views, various reports called it “exhausting,” “desperation,” and “a muddled step down” from the quality these films once promised.

Until recently, even Doomsday’s release date was still in question. Within a day of that trailer going live, Marvel boss Kevin Feige was asked whether he was sure the film would stick to its December 18 opening, pitting it directly against Warner Bros. Pictures’ Dune: Part Three. Feige’s answer was curt: “Yes,” he said, nodding his head, blinking, and not smiling. Indeed, neither studio rescheduled; Dune 3 secured three weeks of Imax exclusivity, and presales for Doomsday — with Marvel’s so-called “Infinity Vision” premium large format (PLF) label — went live last week. But there’s one question that will persist until Dunesday (as fans are calling it) arrives: Can both these films really succeed on the same weekend?

For Marvel, the stakes for its fifth Avengers movie couldn’t be higher, given the film’s sunk costs and placement in the sprawling MCU timeline. Marvel has rescheduled Doomsday twice, thanks to myriad production woes (before the studio fired Jonathan Majors, this was a very different movie called The Kang Dynasty, originally scheduled for mid-2025); a writers’ strike; and a pricey creative pivot that reshuffled its writers, directors, and cast. Then there’s the specter of recent duds. “Thunderbolts, Fantastic Four, all these other films that they’ve tried between Endgame and now aren’t clicking,” says Jeff Bock, a senior media analyst at Exhibitor Relations. “Sometimes you’ve got to drop a greatest-hits album.”

To that end, Doomsday features a dizzying lineup of X-Men, Avengers, and other handsomely paid returning cast members, several of whom have died onscreen, sometimes more than once. Robert Downey Jr. is reportedly making $100 million total for this movie and next year’s sequel, Secret Wars — the movie that Doomsday needs to tee up in the way Infinity War did for Endgame. Once Dune 3 locked up the Imax screens, Marvel answered by rolling out its new “certification” for premium-format screens, Infinity Vision, that several commentators have dismissed as “marketing.” Even by Marvel standards, this film’s path has been messy. And it would no doubt be a headline-making embarrassment if the brand’s latest spectacle were to underperform or — gasp! — come in second place in its opening weekend.

Fortunately for Feige, the box-office odds seem to be in his favor. As of late July, box-office analysts that Vulture spoke with expect Doomsday to beat out Denis Villeneuve’s finale to his cerebral sci-fi trilogy, at the very least in its opening weekend. But in the biggest box-office year since COVID, the studio undoubtedly feels pressure — to both pay off the hype and those actors’ salaries as well as reestablish itself as a reliable moneymaker. “The heat has definitely worn off,” says Bock. So what is Marvel hoping for on opening weekend? “Obviously, they want $200 million–plus,” he says. “That would be considered a success.”

Of course, the battle doesn’t end after one weekend. “Infinity War and Endgame ended up at $2 billion and $2.8 billion, respectively,” Bock says of Marvel’s previous box-office milestones. “Those numbers are just completely out of sight for Doomsday.” Even with an enormous opening, Bock predicts the film’s ultimate tally will more likely fall in the (comparatively) modest $1 billion to $1.5 billion range. No Dune movie has approached the $1 billion threshold yet, but that film’s path to success is less fraught: “Denis Villeneuve has proven himself as one of the top-tier directors,” Bock says. “His story has continued to grow in terms of box office. That can’t be said for where Marvel is right now.”

That Warner Bros. didn’t shift Dune 3 off the December 18 date signals both the studio’s confidence in Villeneuve’s film and what it may think of Marvel’s ability to compete. “Most films move away” from a Marvel release, notes Bock. “I honestly think that Marvel’s first thought was, There is no doubt Dune will move. And then Dune said, ‘We’re not.’” In the game of box-office chicken, neither side swerved, and Dunesday was born — popularized by Timothée Chalamet and Downey’s combined outsize egos and cautiously anodyne ribbing: “We’ll see if we’re still friends by then.”

Barbenheimer 2.0?

Will Dunesday prove to be the next organic Barbenheimer or a forced meme? Part of the secret sauce to Barbie’s and Oppenheimer’s success was the fact that their target demographics didn’t overlap much, prompting lots of friendly joke-making and double-feature date planning. How different are the dude-skewing, sci-fi-loving core audiences for these movies? To what degree will the Imax exclusivity and other premium formats factor into the theatrical success of either title? And which tentpole will win the weekend or leg out into a sustained hit? “The very fact that Dunesday has been coined is a marketer’s dream,” says Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Rentrak. The blockbuster battle, he argues, can benefit both. And now, changing dates is no longer an option: If either Marvel or Warner Bros. were to reschedule, it would risk backlash from fans, lose face with the industry, and project fear — sending the message that something was wrong with whichever title that moved.

Analysts agree that the weekend itself will likely be a box-office bonanza. The prerelease tracking data available indicates that there’s enough room for both films to do big business. “Early presales already underscore strong interest for both,” says Shawn Robbins, the director of analytics for movies at Fandango and author of the Box Office Theory newsletter. “There’s a very real possibility these two films will produce one of the biggest moviegoing weekends in history.”

After the weekend, both films could sail through the holiday season. Their only major blockbuster competition will be Christmas Day’s Jumanji: Open World, which analysts don’t expect to pose a serious threat to either film’s business. “The holiday corridor is one of the most successful box-office seasons,” says Bock. He believes the movies can coexist during that season and still deliver returns: “Daily numbers look like weekend numbers for two weeks.” The only possible downside is that the holidays’ elevated daily numbers could cut into totals over weekends. “But they can certainly catch up in the weeks to come and in the slow months of January and February,” says Bock.

One might think the overlaps in the core audience demographics would hurt either film’s chances, but the available data suggests otherwise. “Despite the fact that casual moviegoers are no longer as locked into the MCU as they were during the Infinity Saga, the floor of core fans is still absolutely massive,” says Brandon Katz, director of insights and content strategy at Greenlight Analytics.

As of late July, Greenlight places frequent moviegoers’ general interest in Doomsday at 77.2 percent, compared to Dune’s 70 percent. Theatrical intent for Doomsday among frequent moviegoers is 65.3 percent, to Dune’s 54.8 percent. Casual moviegoers’ interest in Doomsday is 67.5 percent, to Dune’s 44.5 percent. Theatrical intent to see Doomsday is at 49.6 percent, to Dune’s 29.1 percent. “I would be shocked if Dune 3 outgrossed Avengers on opening weekend domestically, even though I believe there’s room enough for both to succeed,” Katz says.

But Dune 3, the more niche offering, is gaining ground. Per Greenlight, audience interest in Dune 3 rose by 9 percentage points between June and July, while Doomsday plateaued, which Katz noted is not uncommon for blockbusters this far from release. While Doomsday has a larger baseline of interest and multigenerational reach, audience awareness scores of Dune 3 nearly doubled in that same span. The film’s theatrical intent score rose 9.5 points, and its willingness-to-pay score rose 9.1 points. And while Marvel stars are already promoting their film, Dune 3’s hype cycle has hardly begun and promises to put Gen Z–friendly faces like Chalamet, Zendaya, and Robert Pattinson front and center.

As with The Odyssey, Imax and premium-format screens will make up significant chunks of both films’ theatrical totals. “That’s a huge percentage of the box office,” Bock notes. “And that’s going to be in Warner Bros.’ favor.” Per Greenlight’s numbers, audience intent to see Dune 3 on premium-format or Imax screens grew faster than Doomsday’s (+24 percent relative growth versus +5.6 percent), a stat that reinforces how powerful a draw premium-format screens have become in the wake of an auteur-driven Imax spectacle like The Odyssey.

Bock adds, though, that the Infinity Vision label will cover a number of non-Imax screens: “Honestly, when we’re talking about week two, week three, week four, it’ll even out over the holiday corridor because Avengers is going to take all those other PLF screens. But we may not see debuts like we’re used to for either of these franchises.”

Of course, there will only be one box-office winner on Dunesday weekend. It’s worth remembering Barbie’s and Oppenheimer’s opening-weekend totals — $162 million and $82.4 million, respectively — if success for the victor means that these films need to earn something in the neighborhood of $200 million. “It may be more difficult for both Dune: Part Three and Avengers: Doomsday to do that,” says Dergarabedian. “The audience is going to be pulled in a couple different directions.”

By Lane Brown

On a recent Wednesday morning, I paid $29.18 for one ticket to see The Odyssey at the Regal Deer Park Imax on Long Island. The screen there measures 50 feet wide by 31 feet tall — enormous compared with my television but modest next to the screens most people imagine when they hear the word Imax. It’s also the wrong shape. Christopher Nolan shot The Odyssey with Imax cameras, which capture a tall picture designed to fill the company’s original massive, nearly square screens — some over seven stories high — with images bulging above and below the borders of an ordinary movie. Deer Park’s screen is just a standard rectangle, lit by a single laser digital projector that can’t display the film’s full aspect ratio. So for my $29.18, I watched one of the most visually ambitious films ever made with its head and legs chopped off.

Meanwhile, 40 miles west at the Imax inside the AMC Lincoln Square 13, The Odyssey is playing the way Nolan intended — off a 70-mm. film print on a screen 101 feet wide and 76 feet tall. Lincoln