1. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (review)- $55.5M/$58M
The apparent finale of Dreamworks’ How to Train Your Dragon franchise, The Hidden World, topped the previous two entries with a huge $55M opening weekend. That’s on top of the $2.5M it earned in early previews. Overseas it had an earlier rollout and so far the numbers there are huge with $216M for $274M overall. I find it hard to believe Dreamworks will let this be the end. THrough three movies, a long-running TV series, and other various forms of media the audience hasn’t diminished in the least. In terms of records, this is the second highest-grossing animated debut for the month of February behind only 2014’s The Lego Movie.
2. Alita: Battle Angel– $12M/$60.6M
A mixed bag for James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez’s expensive sci-fi epic, Alita: Battle Angel. The down side: a 58% drop and only $60M domestic after two weekends isn’t a good look for the $200M+ film, which needs to make significantly more than that to break even. How to Train Your Dragon sucking up many of the IMAX screens didn’t help. On the plus side, its doing gangbusters overseas with over $100M already, $68M from China, and a Japan release still on the way. I still expect the film will hold fairly steady until Captain Marvel blows up the spot in a couple weeks. But I went to see Alita again last night and there was a sizable crowd. Cameron movies tend to be very leggy and I expect this will be no different.
3. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part– $10M/$83.6M
4. Fighting with My Family= $8M/$8.2M
WWE biopic Fighting with My Family expanded to over 2700 theatres and earned $8M. This is already shaping up to be one of the biggest pro wrestling movies ever, which admittedly isn’t saying much. The film is banking pretty hard on the presence of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who has a couple of brief cameos as himself, and for the WWE audience to turn out and support the story of Paige, a former WWE Women’s Champion. The last wrestling movie to have a much impact at the box office was Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, which only made $26M domestic a decade ago.
5. Isn’t It Romantic– $7.5M/$33.7M
6. What Men Want– $5.2M/$45M
7. Happy Death Day 2U– $4.9M/$21.6M
8. Cold Pursuit– $3.3M/$27M
9. The Upside– $3.2M/$99.7M
10. Run the Race– $2.2M
