Weekend box office: How to Train Your Dragon easily takes the top spot

Brad Sturdivant February 24th, 2019

By clearly beating its predecessor by about $10 million and getting rave reviews from critics, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD is having the kind of opening weekend that everyone expected THE LEGO MOVIE 2: THE SECOND PART to have. Given the success of the film, everyone involved with the third How To Train Your Dragon film have to be questioning their “last film of the series” ethos they were preaching leading up to this great showing at the weekend box office. Like successful horror franchises, successful animated franchises don’t die until a sequel makes less than the movie before it and even then, the franchise usually just takes a break. So I would expect to see Hiccup and Toothless flying again somewhat soon. The other new movie of the weekend was FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY, which is looking at around $8 million. That’s not a bad haul for a wrestling movie with only a supporting turn from The Rock, but I imagine the film will do much better on home video.

Next week sees the release of A MADEA FAMILY FUNERAL. I’ve bet against Madea before and lost, so it’s with great hesitation that I say the film won’t be able to beat HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD in its second week. It’s hard to beat kids movies and horror movies and as loyal as Madea’s fan base is, the last Madea movie (BOO 2: A MADEA HALLOWEEN) opened up with about $21 million. If Funeral matches that total, it won’t be enough to beat Dragon for the top spot. Note: the numbers below will be updated as they become final.

1. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World $60m

2. Alita: Battle Angel $11.1m

3. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part $9.6m

4. Fighting With My Family $7.7m

5. Isn’t It Romantic $7.4m

6. What Men Want $5.2m

7. Happy Death Day 2U $4.7m

8. The Upside $3.5m

9. Cold Pursuit $3.3m

10. Green Book $2.2m

(Deadline)