Dune Part Three ticket demand overwhelmed AMC‘s website and mobile app on Tuesday, prompting AMC chief executive Adam Aron to publicly call the resulting glitches ‘intolerable and inexcusable’ in an X post addressed to frustrated customers.
Aron said ticketing traffic reached levels approximately three times higher than what AMC experienced during the Spider-Man: Brand New Day ticket launch, itself preceded by strong advance sales for The Odyssey. The sheer volume briefly slowed or crashed AMC’s online systems, leaving many customers unable to complete purchases during what was the cinema chain’s second ticket drop for coveted IMAX 70mm screenings and other premium large-format shows.
App errors compounded the chaos behind Dune Part Three ticket demand
Beyond the general slowdowns, customers encountered specific technical failures. According to Forbes, some users found they could not launch the AMC app at all, while others received a ‘Failed to fetch’ message or rate limit error messages. Rate limiting occurs when a server detects that a user or system has sent too many requests within a set period and cuts off further responses, meaning demand was so intense it triggered automated traffic controls built into the platform itself.
Aron did not shy away from accountability. ‘There was much discussion internally ahead of and preparing for the Dune 3 launch. We thought we were ready, but we weren’t,’ he said. He added that AMC has instructed its IT team to ‘move at a whirlwind speed to take whatever steps are needed so that our ticketing systems are, in all situations and in all quantities, again top shelf.’
AMC had released a small initial batch of tickets for ‘Dune: Part Three’ in April, which sold out rapidly. Tuesday’s drop was the second release, specifically targeting premium formats, and the scale of demand appears to have caught the chain off guard despite the April precedent.
Resellers moved quickly as fans queued through the night
The dysfunction online did not deter fans from showing up in person. Business Insider‘s Juliana Kaplan reported that fans began forming a line at New York City’s AMC Lincoln Square 13 around midnight, with the queue stretching around the block. The Lincoln Square theatre houses the largest IMAX in the country and screens films in 70mm, making tickets there among the most sought-after of the summer.
Resellers moved in alongside genuine fans. IMAX 70mm tickets appeared on eBay almost immediately, with one listing on Wednesday morning asking $600 for a pair. That figure mirrors the resale prices seen earlier this year for ‘The Odyssey,’ which debuted in cinemas this July after its own staggered ticket releases caused platform crashes and similar scenes of fans rushing online drops.
Dune Part Three ticket demand fits a broader pattern of high-profile ticketing failures in which infrastructure has not kept pace with concentrated bursts of consumer interest. Resellers have contributed to the pressure on these systems for events ranging from the 2026 World Cup to Taylor Swift’s ‘The Eras Tour,’ drawing pushback from artists, studios, and the US government.
‘We try so hard to be expert in what we usually do so well, devoted as we are to pleasing hundreds of millions of guests in our theatres each year,’ Aron wrote. ‘Today, though, as Dune 3 tickets went on sale, the crushing volumes briefly slowed or glitched our online ticketing systems.’
The film stars Timothée Chalamet reprising his role as Paul Atreides, with Zendaya, Florence Pugh, Robert Pattinson, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem, and Anya Taylor-Joy among the cast. Aron’s public commitment to an IT overhaul means the next ticket drop, whenever AMC schedules one, will serve as a direct test of whether the chain can match the scale of demand its own marketing has helped to generate.