Race-Swapped 'How To Train Your Dragon' Live-Action Film Predicted To Have Weak Opening Weekend
Universal Studios’ upcoming How to Train Your Dragon live-action film, which features a race-swapped Astrid and a diverse town of Berk, is expected to have a weak opening weekend of just around $70 million.
Shawn Robbins at Box Office Theory projected the film will gross between $70 and $80 million for its opening weekend at domestic theaters with a pinpoint projection of $73 million.
That is slightly up from what Robbins had projected the film would do at the beginning of May. He noted at the time it would do between $65 million and $75 million with a pinpoint projection of $72 million.
As for the film’s overall domestic haul at the beginning of this month he projected it would gross between $201 million and $254 million with a pinpoint projection of $230 million.
Over at Variety, Rebecca Rubin projected the film to gross between $70 and $80 million domestically with another $110 million internationally.
At Deadline, Anthony D’Alessandro reported the film only did $8.6 million in Thursday previews at the domestic box office, but added another $3.5 million on Wednesday for an $11.1 million start. However, he even noted that the film was only projected to do between $65 million and $75 million.
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Box office analyst OMB Reviews shared his opinion that these domestic opening weekend projections are low saying, “This just does not seem to have it, at least in the domestic market.”
However, he noted, “This movie is going to perform pretty well in the international markets and overall because it is a kids film and kids’ films tend to leg out over time that over time the film will still be able to recoup its money that was sent on the film itself.”
Later in his video he noted he believes this is low given opening films like Mission: Impossible, Lilo & Stich, A Minecraft Movie also surpassed the $170 global mark with Lilo & Stich and A Minecraft Movie having $300 million plus opening weekends.
While those numbers might seem lower than expected as OMB Reviews noted the film is likely to make back its money and then some. Rubin reported the film only cost $150 million to produce and thus it would need to gross around $450 million to break even.
The original animated film grossed $495.1 million when it bowed back in 2010. It had an opening weekend of $43.7 million, which is around $64.4 million when factoring in inflation.
However, that film had really strong holds at the box office only declining 34% in its second weekend and just 14% and 21% in weekends three and four. Meaning it had really strong legs, good word of mouth, and a significant number of repeat viewers.
If you want to look at the most recent entry in the franchise, How to Train Your Dragon: Hidden World had an opening of $55 million in 2019. That’s around $69.1 million when factoring in inflation. It went on to gross $520.9 million globally. It too had strong holds only declining by 45% in weekend 2, 51% in its third weekend and 37% in its fourth weekend.
What do you make of these box office projections for How to Train Your Dragon?
Hopefully it flops.
To be fair, it's barely a race swap. She may have recent non-European ancestry, but she's about as dark as white chocolate. It's a hair-swap, at worst.
That said, I don't see the interest in this thing. Seems like Dreamworks is going to beat Disney at their own game, but it's a stupid game to be playing, and you know what they say about playing stupid games.