Universal/DreamWorks’ “How to Train Your Dragon” remake has taken off at the box office with a strong $82.5 million domestic opening weekend and $200 million worldwide.
While not at the heights of Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch,” the remake starring Mason Thames as the dragon rider Hiccup is topping the opening weekends of its three 2010s animated predecessors and is enjoying strong reception with an A on CinemaScore and Rotten Tomatoes scores of 77% critics and 98% audience.
Universal has shown a lot of confidence in the remake, announcing back in April that a remake of the second installment of the “How to Train Your Dragon” trilogy had been greenlit for a summer 2027 release. With this start, the “Dragon” remake is on pace to pass the unadjusted $217 million domestic total of the animated version of the film released in 2010.
Also opening wide this weekend is A24’s “Materialists,” a romance drama starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal that is director Celine Song’s follow-up to the Oscar-nominated “Past Lives.” The $20 million production is on course for a $12 million opening from 2,844 theaters, good for third on the charts behind the $15 million fourth weekend of “Lilo & Stitch,” which now has a domestic total of $366 million.
“Materialists” has been well received by critics with an 87% Rotten Tomatoes score, but audiences were less enthused with a B- on CinemaScore and a 71% RT audience score. While the film’s marketing suggested a more straightforward love triangle drama, “Materialists” is a deeper and more incisive look into modern romance and its commodification that might have left audiences who discovered the film through the trailer feeling thrown off.
Meanwhile, the second weekend of Lionsgate’s “Ballerina” is showing a frontloaded run for the “John Wick” spinoff at $8.7 million, a 64% drop from the film’s disappointing $24 million debut. With an estimated 10-day total of $41 million, the movie will need a combination of its foreign presales and post-theatrical revenue to turn a profit.
More to come…
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