‘Aquaman’ First Day Ticket Sales Robust: Atom Hits 24-Hour Record; DC Superhero Pic Beating ‘Venom’ On Fandango

The last three Christmases have been about Star Wars at the box office, and Warner Bros. is looking for DC to leave its mark, starting with Aquaman this year.

The James Wan-directed Dec. 21 release, is Atom Tickets’ top advance ticket seller ever in its first 24 hours, beating the previous 24-hour ticket sales record set by Avengers: Infinity War earlier this year.

Atom’s first day sales include those sold for the Amazon Prime/Warner Bros. advance screening partnership for the film on Dec. 15 in 1,000 locations. Prime members can exclusively buy tickets from Atom (up to 10 tickets each) for sneaks that will take place on that day at Regal, National Amusement, AMC and ArcLight Cinemas. Amazon struck a similar promotion with Sony last year on their holiday hit Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle which reaped close to $2M (there’s also been other Amazon sneaks with such pics as Hotel Transylvania 3).

Meanwhile, over at Fandango, Aquaman‘s first day pre-sales eclipsed those for Venom ($80.2M opening weekend) and Mission: Impossible –Fallout ($61.2M). Fans buying tickets for Aquaman on Fandango with their VIP Accounts receive five free digital DC Comic books (including Aquaman, No. 1) as gifts with ticket purchase.

Atom Tickets has been selling movie tickets for roughly the last two years versus Fandango which has been around since 2000. Advance ticket sales aren’t always an indicator that a film will open huge. However that was the case this past year when early on, advance tickets for Black Panther were seen to be besting Captain America: Civil War‘s 24-hour sales record. In the end, Black Panther beat that threequel, $202M to $179.1M in comparative opening weekends.