'How to Train Your Dragon' Takes Friday Box-Office Crown and Will Win the Weekend
'Hot Tub Time Machine' looks to take third behind 'Alice'
Deadline has delivered very early Friday box-office numbers showing the 3D animated DreamWorks feature How to Train Your Dragon taking in an estimated $12 million on Friday, a figure that should certainly balloon over the weekend with family audiences. Deadline's Nikki Finke is currently projecting a range of $45 million, but I think word of mouth on this one will be really strong and wouldn't be surprised to see a much higher result.
After three straight weeks at #1, Disney's Alice in Wonderland falls to second place with $4.9 million on Friday and I would anticipate about $19-20 million for the weekend. However, that should prove to be enough to beat MGM's Hot Tub Time Machine which opened with $4.7 million on Friday, but it will be tough for the R-rated comedy to compete with family fare over the weekend. I just have to wonder what MGM is going to think of that number as our very own Box-Office Oracle predicted a whopping $24.78 million for the film of which Laremy and I both enjoyed and others ranked it around $20 million for the weekend, but it looks like it will be lucky to hit $15 million.
Last week's releases of The Bounty Hunter and Diary of a Wimpy Kid will take #4 and #5 respectively and it looks like word-of-mouth on Wimpy Kid must not have been too strong or the audience wasn't too big as it went from besting Bounty Hunter last week in its opening frame to dropping below the film the following weekend. Neither scored very high with critics, but when kid films fall this far they must not be too impressive.
The rest of the list is directly below, and Laremy will be here Sunday morning with the complete wrap up.
- How To Train Your Dragon – $12 million
- Alice In Wonderland – $4.9 million
- Hot Tub Time Machine – $4.7 million
- The Bounty Hunter – $4 million
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid – $2.8 million
- She's Out Of Your League – $1.1 million
- Green Zone – $990,000
- Shutter Island – $955,000
- Repo Men – $930,000
- Remember Me – $690,000
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Dang HTTYD is doing very welll!
HTTYD is doing what? This is solid result. A good result for a movie in 4000 theaters is at least $50M. HTTYD is dissapointing.
In the world of animation comedy is king and How to Train Your Dragon wasn't advertised as a comedy. It's a simmilar situation to A Christmas Carol.
wow great job on Jay Burachel. the man has two of his movies in the top 10 at the box-office. How to train your dragon at #1 and Shes out of my league sitting in at #6 ! He is an up and comming star and im so glad he hails from my home country of Canada !!!
I think he has the potential to be a great actor, as long as he keeps choosing projects like the film we can now declare as the #1 movie of this weekend.
Same w/Gerard Butler, too. The Bounty Hunter, a dud as it is, has maintained its power, though small, and HTTYD is a success! It is way to early to call spring break numbers, but I think it'll only drop 20% if there is good W-O-M.
Assuming Dragon fails to reach $50 million, let alone my $62 million guess:
Wow. I'm even wondering if Dragon is going to make back it's marketing costs(in theaters). Peoples warnings about non-franchise, dragon themed, end of the month, spring animation efforts proved to be well founded. I'm also beginning to wonder if people were giving films the benefit of the doubt earlier in the year, and felt they got burned, so now they are being more selective. Possible silver lining: it has no competition for the next nine weeks except the eye rolling "Furry Vengeance". Is this suddenly not a good time to release movies that don't already have some kind of base? Luckily, all three of next weekend's movies have some kind of base of support.
Diary of a Wimpy kid was probably never going to break out of the box of it's audience being only a percentage of those who have read the books, and their escorts.
How much did 'Chloe' make?
@m1 re Chloe: IDK but what's with the platform release?
We have a huge box office battle this weekend. But not by the newly released films. Instead we see Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood(the first to publish estimates) disagreeing with Variety Magazine about the #10 spot, with Nikki reporting that Remember Me, with an estimated $690,000 friday as winning the spot, and Variety claiming Our Family Wedding in the #10 spot with an estimated $623,000. Meanwhile, Box Office Magazine has noticed this, and is only publishing the top nine. Who will be able to say TOLDJA! after this weekend? I'm picking Nikki, since once I was made to look silly by quoting a number in Variety that turned out to be a typo.
1. Dragon – all agree
2.
TOLDJA! Nikki wins re Box Office Mojo.
Excuse me, i am not a genius, but a 3D… Dreamworks… animation family movie… making $45 million is essentially a flop isnt it? Higher tkt price for the 3D and universal appeal and wide release, and yet just $45 million?
You could have said the same about A Christmas Carol.
3D… Disney… animation family movie….. made $30.5 million in it's first weekend.
And yes a Christmas Carol also disapointed. A $200M budget animated 3D movie from Disney making only a $30M opening weekend is bad.
It is not a flop, but is a dissapointing begining. Now, we can only hope that the excellet WOM will carry him above $200M
I expect HTTYD taking money in the weekday. It may have good WOM but Clash will be battling it out for 3D screens, though HTTYD will not lose theaters. Expect a good but not great 35-40% drop. And I agree, $43 is considerably low for Dreamworks if you exclude Ice Age.
I think HTTYD will have good Int'l numbers.
I think Dragon should have some good legs. Maybe not as good as Up that we saw almost a year ago, but it doesn't have to start worrying until Dreamworks puts out Shrek then it is done. I will agree this is very low for a Dreamworks movie maybe people are skeptical about it right now. I thought it was a good movie. Sidenote: I don't think Dreamworks has had a movie open this low since Shark Tale. (If you don't count the awful Wallace and Gromit)
Wallace and Gromit in Curse of the Were Rabbit was a brilliant satire on British culture. I'm glad it won Best animated feature at the 2005/2006 Oscars.
HTTYD did around the same numbers as previous Dreamworks films; MADAGASCAR & SHARK TALE. Both made almost 200 mil. Its Spring Break guys so a lot of families are on vacations not being able to see movies. When they come back they will see it. And since there is not another family film till Shrek 4 on May 21. Expect this film to have great legs as with a great WOM. Since, it will be the ONLY family film out there for awhile.
I expect its final cume to be around 150-160 mil. similar to Shark Tale.
I read they spent a fortune promoting Dragon. MGM set aside (but claims they didn't spend it all) $45 million for promoting Hot Tub Time Machine. Did they spend $75 million to promote Dragon. $100 million, maybe? Dragon will have to struggle mightily just to break even. That's including all revenue streams.
The really sad news is that "3D ticket inflation" probably added 20% to Dragon's total. That's what, $36 million if only shown on 2D?