How to Train Your Dragon soared into theaters with the biggest opening in franchise history and unseated Lilo & Stitch from the top spot at the box office.
How to Train Your Dragon opened to $84.6 million, surpassing the series’ previous high mark for opening weekends, which was set in 2019 with How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World‘s $55 million. Worldwide, the live-action remake has grossed $198.7 million, making it the fourth-largest global opening of the year. Audiences gave the movie an A CinemaScore, and the Rotten Tomatoes audience score is at 98%, so word of mouth should be huge as we close out June and head into the heart of the summer movie season in July.
Lilo & Stitch dropped 51% due to direct competition from Dragon and earned an additional $15.7 million. It now has $366.5 million domestic and $825.9 million worldwide. That’s still trailing A Minecraft Movie, and while their grosses are close, it seems like A Minecraft Movie is going to edge out Lilo & Stitch on the 2025 charts, both domestically and worldwide. A Minecraft Movie has grossed $951.4 million worldwide.
Materialists debuted in third place with $12 million. That’s a solid debut for a modern romantic comedy, although slightly behind movies like Ticket to Paradise and No Hard Feelings. It’s the third-best opening in the history of A24, behind Civil War and Hereditary. The movie received a B- CinemaScore, which isn’t ideal for a film that relies on strong word of mouth to counterprogram against the bigger blockbusters. We’ll have to see what the drop is like this coming weekend.
M: I – The Final Reckoning and Ballerina rounded out the top 5. Ballerina experienced a steep 60% drop from last weekend’s already modest debut, and it stands at $42.1 million domestically and $91.8 million worldwide. It’s going to come out on top of the original John Wick, but it’s not going to come close to the grosses of any of the other entries in the franchise.
Further down the list, The Life of Chuck expanded widely but only managed to eke out ninth place with $2.3 million, bringing its total domestic earnings to $2.6 million. Neon was likely thinking this could be a potential awards contender, especially after it won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, but it seems there is limited interest in this Stephen King adaptation.
How to Train Your Dragon also had the best per-theater average of the weekend, taking in $19,429 in each of the 4,356 theaters it was playing in.
