‘Dune’ has opened to $5.1 million at the Thursday box office.
“Dune,” an ambitious adaptation of Frank Herbert’s famously unadaptable sci-fi epic, opened to a lordly $5.1 million in Thursday previews. The film will unspool across 4,100 theaters in the U.S. and Canada on Friday and is projected to generate $30 million to $40 million in its first three days of release. “Dune” centers on a group of aristocratic families who are vying for control of a desert planet that contains a natural resource, dubbed “spice,” of enormous value. The Warner Bros. and Legendary production is debuting simultaneously on HBO Max, which could depress ticket sales. That’s part of a larger corporate strategy undertaken by the studio which opted to debut all of its films day-and-date on the streamer as a concession to COVID-19.
