Box office: How to Train Your Dragon soars to franchise-best opening

Also: Celine Song's Materialists had the best opening of any non-IP film directed by a woman in over two years.

Hiccup (Mason Thames) and Toothless in How to Train Your Dragon.

For the first time ever, the top two movies at the box office are both live-action remakes of animated movies: How to Train Your Dragon, this week’s #1 movie, is a remake of the 2010 DreamWorks classic, while Lilo & Stitch, which dropped to #2 this week after three weeks at the top, is a remake of the 2002 Disney cartoon.¹

Even more remarkable, both of the new live-action remakes are directed by men named Dean. And one of those Deans—Dean DeBlois, director of How to Train Your Dragon—was a co-director on the original animated versions of both films. (The other Dean is Dean Fleischer Camp, director of the new Lilo & Stitch.)

In the past, we wouldn’t have seen two live-action animated-movie remakes top the chart at the same time because, until now, all of these movies have been made by the same studio, i.e. Disney—and Disney has been careful to space these movies out so that they don’t compete with each other at the box office.²

But now that DreamWorks is getting in on the action, a little more direct competition is possible. And we may see more of this sort of thing in the future if other animated franchises go the live-action route. Time will tell.³

In the meantime, a few of this week’s other highlights:

• Materialists, a love-triangle story directed by Celine Song (an Oscar nominee for Past Lives), was the first movie directed by a woman to get a major release this year, and it had the best opening weekend of any non-IP movie directed by a woman since Cocaine Bear in February 2023. (By “non-IP”, I mean it’s not based on a toy, video game, comic book, concert tour, or already-existing movie.)

• Ballerina, which already had one of the lowest opening weekends of any John Wick movie, is now on track to have the steepest second-weekend drop of the franchise.

• The Life of Chuck had one of the weakest first weekends in wide release of any Stephen King adaptation, even before you adjust for inflation.

And now, a few more stats and facts re: this week’s top ten, title by title: