How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World beat expectations this Oscar weekend, leading the box office with an estimated $55 million, Box Office Mojo is reporting. That not only gave it the best debut of the franchise to date, but it also awarded it the largest opening weekend of the year so far, beating last month’s Glass. The movie is also already the biggest film of the year in terms of worldwide receipts, with a global total of $274 million.
The Hidden World marks the first DreamWorks Animation film since Universal officially acquired them, and the studio expressed confidence in the marketing of the sequel in the months leading up to its release. The movie was released in other territories several weeks before it flew into the states, and early screenings were also held in the US in early February. Presumably, Universal felt that word-of-mouth on the adventure epic would be strong, and it appears it all paid off, with Dragon not seeing any animated competition until March 15th with Wonder Park. Next up for DreamWorks/Universal is Abominable in September, followed by a Trolls sequel in 2020.
Elsewhere at the box office, Alita: Battle Angel saw a higher plunge than it was probably hoping for, dropping to $12 million after a fairly solid opening last week. Meanwhile, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part continued to do “fine” with a third weekend looting of $10 million, bringing its total to $83 million. Though it will reach the $100 million mark stateside, it hasn’t made nearly as much money as the original film did. By comparison, The Lego Movie had made $183 million by this point of its theatrical run (and for those who are curious, the spin-off film Billion Brick Race is still “officially” listed for release this Memorial Day, but since we haven’t seen so much as a trailer for that movie yet it seems extremely unlikely that it’s coming out on that date).
Final figures are due tomorrow.