‘How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World’ Is Already Winning At The B.O. With $175M Abroad Prior To $40M+ U.S. Start
Before How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World lands in the U.S./Canada this weekend with a $40M to possibly $45M start in 4,000 locations, the $129M DreamWorks Animation threequel is already in great shape have already amassed $175M overseas with a great 96% Rotten Tomatoes score, besting its predecessor’s 92% certified fresh.
We also can’t forget Hidden World‘s $2.5M from Fandango Feb. 2 paid previews stateside, a figure that surpasses the sneak cash made by Amazon Prime and Sony’s partnership on Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation. Thursday showtimes for Hidden World fire up at 6PM.
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True, Hidden World has been in release since January and has played in 49 territories, but its running global cume already bests that of Alita: Battle Angel ($138M WW) and Lego Movie 2: The Second Part ($103M WW). Hidden World reps one of the first major productions in a Jeffrey Katzenberg-less DWA; the first release under its new home at Universal Pictures. In addition, the production cost on the threequel has been ratcheted down from $165M on the first one to $129M here. Brad Lewis and Bonnie Arnold produce.
There’s been a lot of TLC here by the studio and Dragon franchise director Dean DeBlois in maintaining the pic’s emotional integrity, upping its stakes and improving the CGI (the sand, stones and water elements are truly mind blowing and life-like). Jay Baruchel and America Ferrera also return respectively as Dragon handlers Hiccup and Astrid. They’re joined by the pic’s stock theater company of Cate Blanchett, Gerard Butler, Kit Harington, Craig Ferguson, Jonah Hill, Kristin Wiig, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Justin Rupple. New to the series is Amadeus Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham, who plays Grimmel, the man who threatens to destroy everything the people of Berk and their dragons have ever cherished.
Even though the third part’s expected start is under How to Train Your Dragon 2‘s $49.4M and How to Train Your Dragon‘s $43.7M, it’s an animated movie with stellar reviews and it can expect to play for quite some time until the next big family movie comes along: Disney’s Dumbo on March 29. When the first Dragon movie opened back in 2010, there was a lot of noise about how low its domestic start was, however, the feature churned a near 5x multiple for a final domestic of $217.6M plus two Oscar nominations for Best Animated Film and John Powell’s Original Score. The sequel, which made $177M domestic was also nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Oscar. Between both installments, their WW B.O. shot up 26% from $494.9M to $621.5M and to date including Hidden World, the franchise counts close to $1.3B.
Hidden World has debuted in the No. 1 spot in 40 markets and hit Dragon franchise record debuts in 39 of them. For DWA, the threequel is their biggest opening in Mexico, Argentina, Egypt, Turkey and Vietnam, the biggest animated opening of all-time in Egypt and Vietnam, and the highest-grossing film of the brand in 17 territories including Mexico, Argentina, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru, Thailand and Vietnam. Nine more markets will open with domestic this Friday followed by 11 more this spring, including China on March 1.
Fox/Lightstorm’s Alita: Battle Angel, who won’t shed much of her PLF/Imax/Dolby/RealD venues this weekend, is estimated to see $14M in weekend 2 per industry projections, down around 50% from her FSS of $28.5M. The Robert Rodriguez-directed picture’s 5-day came in ahead of tracking with $42.2M.
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After accumulating close to $200K from four NYC and LA theaters during the Presidents Day Weekend frame, MGM will bust the Dwayne Johnson-Seven Bucks produced Fighting With My Family wide in north of 2,500 theaters with an eye at $8M-$10M. For the first time in their history, Seven Bucks launched the movie at the Sundance Film Festival. Fighting With My Family follows UK wrestler Paige who worked her way up from her working class Norwich roots, defied TV wrestling’s glam female stereotype and became the youngest Divas Champion in WWE history at the age of 21.
The Seven Bucks team went outside of the studio system to get the movie made. Seven Bucks, along with Kevin Misher (who Seven Bucks brought on early in the process), received seed money from Film4 before MGM acquired global rights for the project out of Berlin in 2017 for $17.5M, an unprecedented pick-up for the market as exclusively reported by Deadline.
The roots of Fighting With My Family go back to the documentary The Wrestlers: Fighting With My Family. One night while shooting in London on Fast & Furious 6, Johnson couldn’t sleep and caught the doc on a local public access channel. He became immediately enthralled with the story of the young wrestler Paige, and her eccentric wrestling family. Paige’s family reminded him very much of his own wrestling family and origin story. Fighting With My Family has an awesome 93% RT score and a solid ‘A’ CinemaScore.
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