‘How to Train Your Dragon’s Global Box Office Debut Smashes Expectations

Thanks to an incredible response from its target audience, DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon remake delivered a humongous global box office debut this weekend. The movie marks DreamWorks debut in the live-action remake territory, which had been monopolized by close competitor Disney for over a decade. However, with several of Disney’s recent remakes stumbling at the box office, How to Train Your Dragon’s success wasn’t guaranteed. Produced on a reported budget of $150 million, the movie made nearly $200 million in its first three days of release globally.

How to Train Your Dragon delivered the year’s fourth-biggest domestic box office debut, grossing $83 million. It added another $114 million from overseas markets, for a cumulative global haul of $198 million. Directed by Dean DeBlois, who co-directed the 2010 animated original with Chris Sanders, How to Train Your Dragon is headlined by Mason Thames, with Gerard Butler returning to play the character he voiced in the original. A millennial favorite, the animated How to Train Your Dragon grossed nearly $500 million at the worldwide box office.

Released in 2014, How to Train Your Dragon 2 made over $620 million worldwide, while 2018’s How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World generated more than $500 million globally. The second and third films were also directed by DeBlois. The live-action remake opened to solid (but not spectacular) reviews, with many noting its similarities to the original. It holds a 77% score on Rotten Tomatoes. However, audiences seemed to be more appreciative of its charms, awarding it a near-perfect 98% score on the aggregator website.

Interest in Live-Action Remakes Seems to Be Back Up

In recent years, movies such as Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King have demonstrated that the total addressable market for live-action remakes is massive; each of these movies made over $1 billion worldwide. But other films such as Snow White, Dumbo, and The Little Mermaid all underperformed against huge budgets, raising concerns about the audience’s interest in remakes. How to Train Your Dragon is playing along the lines of Lilo & Stitch, which is good news for the already-announced sequel, set for a 2027 release. You can watch the movie in theaters, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.