The How To Train Your Dragon movies have all been successful at the box office, as the lowest grossing title to date made $495.1 million before the end of its time playing on the big screen around the world… but opening weekend numbers have never been particularly huge for the films. That history in mind makes the tracking for the upcoming live-action remake all the more fascinating, as if the feature performs as currently expected, we will see it have the biggest debut in the franchise yet this coming weekend.
The new remake starring Mason Thames, Gerard Butler and Nico Parker will officially start its theatrical run this coming Friday, and according to Deadline, prognosticators are expecting a domestic haul between $65-75 million – and that is considered conservative. It’s not a total that would put the film in “biggest domestic debut of 2025” territory, as the numbers put up by A Minecraft Movie ($162.8 million) and Lilo & Stitch ($146 million) will be very hard to best, but ticket sales at the higher end of range would mean placing in the Top 5.
Even if the live-action How To Train Your Dragon does make just $65 million in its first Friday-to-Sunday, it will still be the best start any title in the franchise has gotten in the United States and Canada. When it premiered in March 2010, the original animated film brought in $43.7 million; How To Train Your Dragon 2 earned $49.5 million when it opened in June 2014, and How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World launched with $55 million in February 2019.
The new How To Train Your Dragon has mostly earned praise from critics, but it has also been criticized for its extreme faithfulness to the animated movie and inability to present an answer to the question, “Why did this need to be remade?” In regards to the latter point, however, young audiences who have not seen the animated version aren’t going to be making that comparison, and they are the key demographic for the film.
Outside of the domestic region, How To Train Your Dragon is also expected to play extremely well overseas, which is expected as all of the movies in the animated trilogy made more money from foreign markets than at home. Estimates for the new 2025 movie suggest it will have between $175-185 million in the bank before the end of the day on Sunday. That’s a solid start for a film that cost a reported $150 million (without factoring publicity and marketing costs).
The biggest competition that How To Train Your Dragon will face in cinemas is Lilo & Stitch, which remained at #1 in the Top 10 for the third straight weekend. Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend on Sunday for my box office column and to learn how the performance of one live-action remake impacts the other.
