Box Office - 'Dragon' Opens With $43 Million

Although it made $10,000 per screen, How to Train Your Dragon still has to be considered something of a slight opening weekend disappointment. In one fewer theater and with the benefit of higher 3-D ticket prices, the movie made a whopping $20 million less than the same studio's Madagascar: Escape to Africa. Viewed another way: Only two movies that opened in more than 4,000 theaters made less. If this were an $80 million movie, that'd be one thing, but Train Your Dragon reportedly cost over $150 million before P & A, meaning a $43 million start isn't anything for DreamWorks to crow about. Kind of a shame, because the movie is both entertaining and the most effective use of 3-D in an animated film in this new era for that technology. Of course, $43 million was far and away the best figure of the weekend, but it probably means Dragon will have a very, very short run at the top with Clash of the Titans arriving next Friday. The drops are always worth paying attention to with animated films; there's not much in this category for the next few weeks so it might gravy train some money that way, but I doubt it can make back its budget in the US alone. Hot Tub Time Machine is also a little underwhelming, but I had actually overestimated its chances in Thursday's forecast, feeling froggy. It was probably about a $16 - $18 million movie and not a $20 million flick based on a sub-3,000 theater count, but it didn't even get to the lower end of that projection. It nearly made $14 million, and that's OK because the film was probably quite cheap to produce. I mean, what does John Cusack charge? That's the only real consideration going in. So this will be profitable, even if it only winds up making about $30 million or so. Alice in Wonderland dropped from first place to second, but it did manage to hold half of last weekend's audience even though it sacrificed about 10% of its theaters. That's not bad. Overseas ticket sales have pushed its grand total to $656 million in four weeks, moving it into the top 40 films all time in that regard. To break the top 30, Alice needs to make another $100 million, and most of that would be in foreign markets. By the time the end of next month gets here, it should easily be past that landmark. The Top Five:
1 - How to Train Your Dragon ($43.3 million)
2 - Alice in Wonderland ($17.3 million)
3 - Hot Tub Time Machine ($13.6 million)
4 - The Bounty Hunter ($12.4 million)
5 - Diary of a Wimpy Kid ($10 million)

Comments

[Vince]

Animated action films almost always disappoint. No different for Dragon. Dreamworks will be having a rough year already I can tell.

[Honz Brix]

Dreamworks will be fine. It will bounce back with Shrek and Oobermind/Mastermind