Universal/DreamWorks’ “How to Train Your Dragon” remake has earned the fourth highest opening weekend of 2025 so far with $83.7 million from 4,356 locations.
It easily clears the $55 million opening of “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” in 2019 to become the DreamWorks franchise’s highest domestic opening in history as well as pre-release tracking of a $75 million start. Audiences are also giving it strong marks with an A on CinemaScore and a 98% Rotten Tomatoes audience score, with 57% under the age of 25 and 73% under the age of 35, as expected for a remake of a 2010s animated trilogy.
With such a strong performance, it’s little wonder that Universal greenlit a remake of the second installment of the “How to Train Your Dragon” trilogy back at CinemaCon, set for release in June 2027. It’s highly likely that this remake will pass the $614 million unadjusted global total of “How to Train Your Dragon 2” to become the series’ top grosser and join with “Jurassic World: Rebirth” and “The Bad Guys 2” to give Universal the strong summer it is looking for.
This start also will make things tougher for Disney/Pixar’s “Elio,” which is tracking for a $35 million opening next weekend. There has been a hard ceiling for animated films that don’t have a familiar IP attached like “Elemental” and “The Wild Robot,” and “Elio” will need exceptionally strong word-of-mouth to peel families away from the big-screen spectacle of live-action/CGI dragon battles featuring some of DreamWorks’ most popular characters.
Speaking of Disney, “Lilo & Stitch” is in second with a fourth weekend of $15.5 million, bringing its domestic total to $366.4 million and its global total to $858 million. It is now roughly $91 million away from passing “A Minecraft Movie” as the year’s highest grossing film.
In third is the other wide release of the weekend, A24’s “Materialists” with $12 million from 2,844 locations. It’s the third highest opening ever for A24 behind “Civil War” and “Hereditary,” and puts Celine Song’s follow-up to “Past Lives” on course to be theatrically successful against its reported $20 million budget.
But it’s not all good news for the film, as critics seem to be favoring it more than audiences with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 87% critics and 69% audience to go with a B- on CinemaScore. The romantic drama starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal was promoted with trailers that suggested a more conventional love triangle tale while hiding the film’s darker and more incisive elements, which may have led to poorer reception from moviegoers who were expecting a different film than the one they got.
Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” is in fourth with $10.3 million, bringing its domestic total to $166.3 million after four weekends. It tops the second weekend of Lionsgate’s “Ballerina,” which despite strong opening weekend audience reception has fallen 64% from its $24 million opening to an $8.7 million frame and a $41.1 million 10-day total.
More to come…
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