'How to train your dragon' is new top-grossing movie
"How to Train Your Dragon" breathed a bit of box-office fire with a US$43.3mil opening weekend and a No. 1 debut, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Distributed by Paramount, the DreamWorks Animation adventure came in well behind the studio's last cartoon comedy, "Monsters vs. Aliens," which opened with US$59.3mil over the same weekend last year.
With strong reviews and enthusiastic responses from viewers in exit polls, DreamWorks expects "How to Train Your Dragon" to have more staying power than "Monsters vs. Aliens" in subsequent weekends, though.
"People just love the film, so we're really anticipating we'll benefit from strong word of mouth going forward," said Anne Globe, head of marketing for DreamWorks.
"How to Train Your Dragon," featuring the voices of Jay Baruchel and America Ferrera in the tale of a Viking youth who tames a fire-breathing reptile, did outperform some other recent animated movies, among them "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," which opened with US$30.3mil last September.
Disney's "Alice in Wonderland," which had been No. 1 the previous three weekends, slipped to second place with US$17.3mil. It raised its domestic total to US$293.1mil and its worldwide haul to US$656mil.
John Cusack's raunchy comedy "Hot Tub Time Machine" had a lukewarm No. 3 debut of $13.7 million. Released by MGM, the movie features Cusack as part of a group of losers hurled back by a time-traveling hot tub to the 1980s, where they have a chance to set their lives right.
"How to Train Your Dragon" pulled in 68 per cent of its revenue from 3-D presentation, another triumph for the digital technology that allows theaters to show movies in three dimensions.
Yet it also highlights the limits on how much 3-D traffic theaters are equipped to handle. "How to Train Your Dragon" took over the bulk of 3-D theaters at the expense of Disney's "Alice in Wonderland," because the roughly 4,000 screens capable of showing digital 3-D movies are not enough to handle two full wide-release films at the same time.
"There's no question there are not enough screens yet," said Chuck Viane, head of distribution for Disney. "People who want to seek out 'Alice' in 3-D may have to travel a mile or two more than they used to. ... It's competition. I'm used to it."
After a phenomenal 15-week run, James Cameron's blockbuster "Avatar" lost most of its remaining 3-D theaters to "How to Train Your Dragon." The 20th Century Fox release finally fell out of the top 10, taking in US$2mil to finish at No. 11, raising its domestic total to US$740.4mil. Worldwide, the movie has taken in US$2.7bil.
Another new 3-D release, Warner Bros. action tale "Clash of the Titans," arrives Friday. While the success of 3-D movies has driven theater chains to speed up their conversion to systems that can project digital 3-D films, a screen shortage will remain for the near future.
"There is a limited amount of shelf space. It's like a traffic jam at the multiplex for these 3-D movies," said Paul Dergarabedian, box-office analyst for Hollywood.com. "It's a high-class problem to have, but it's still a problem."
Films playing in 3-D have topped the box office for nine of 13 weekends this year, Dergarabedian said.
Overall revenues were down for the first time in a month. Domestic receipts totaled US$127mil, off 13 percent from the same weekend last year, according to Hollywood.com.
For the year, revenues are at US$2.6bil, 8.8 percent ahead of last year.
Results for "Hot Tub Time Machine" came in on the low end of distributor MGM's expectations.
"It's not great, but it's OK," said Erik Lomis, head of distribution for MGM. "It had a lot of Internet buzz, so we thought it might come in a little bit higher."
In narrower release, Sony Pictures Classics' sex thriller "Chloe" opened with $1 million in 350 theaters, averaging a weak US$2,863 a cinema. That compared to an average of US$10,678 in 4,055 theaters for "How to Train Your Dragon" and US$4,956 in 2,754 theaters for "Hot Tub Time Machine."
Directed by Atom Egoyan, "Chloe" stars Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson and Amanda Seyfried in a drama about a woman who hires a prostitute to tempt her husband and find out if he's cheating on her. - AP
Published March 29 2010
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