Box Office Breakdown for Weekend of 6/15/25
What’s up, Geeks + Gamers? It’s ODIN!
How to Train Your Dragon (2025) Goes Toe-to-Toe With Previous Animated Films
Going into the weekend, the numbers for the live-action adaptation of How to Train Your Dragon seemed to be coming in low, with some estimates hovering around $65 million domestically. With the early estimates now being reported as $83 million domestically and almost $200 million globally, we have a bit of a mixed bag for the film moving forward. The biggest win is, without a doubt, the fact that whether you compare the box office ticket estimates or adjust the original animated movies’ box office debuts for inflation, the live-action version is right in line with what the previous films have done.
When looking at the ticket sales, the original animated film from 2010 sold roughly 5,542,753 tickets, the sequel sold about 6,052,793, and the last film in the trilogy sold about 6,006,795. We estimate that the live-action movie has sold approximately 5,978,571 tickets, which is clearly only slightly below the 2nd and 3rd films’ domestic openings and actually higher than the the debut of the original. If we look at adjusted box office totals, the numbers in order of release are $61,225,247, $64,286,719, $66,576,916, and a franchise high of roughly $83,700,000 for the live-action version. Even though these comparisons reveal that the audience has not really grown as much as the numbers indicate, for a franchise to keep its audience like this is a huge win for Dreamworks/Universal. The news is even better when you realize that this live-action release has the smallest budget of any of the How to Train Your Dragon movies (when adjusted), which means that the profit margins for the film can already be projected to be either as good or even better than the animated films.
The bad news for the new How to Train Your Dragon (and, to be clear, this is purely relative) is that it is not making nearly as much as the other big releases from this year. With films like Minecraft reaching about $951 million off of a global opening of over $313 million and the live-action Lilo and Stitch just crossing $825 million off of a global opening of over $304 million, it seems How to Train Your Dragon is not likely to reach the same heights, even if it has similar good holds from week to week. That’s not to say it’s a failure, but it should make it quite clear why $1 billion is pretty much off the table for this movie (which, to be honest, is not that big of a deal). Ultimately, the live-action How to Train Your Dragon is likely to be the most successful of the entire franchise, which is a rare feat to see these days. Though I personally have issues with the movie since it is almost completely a shot-for-shot remake of the original animation and serves no real purpose except to be a cash-grab opportunity, it is performing very well with audiences, with the 22 reviewers (so far) on Criticless giving the movie a 74% “Rad” score as of this writing.
According to the-numbers.com, the top 5 this weekend domestically were:
- How to Train Your Dragon ($83.7 million as a new release)
- Lilo and Stitch (52% drop in 4th weekend)
- Materialists ($12 million as a new release)
- Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (31% drop in 4th weekend)
- Ballerina ($62% drop in 2nd weekend)
Ballerina Flops Theatrically, and Lilo and Stitch is Slowing Down
Lastly, let us talk about the 2nd weekend numbers for Ballerina and the massive slowdown that has occurred for the Lilo and Stitch live-action film. Ballerina saw a massive domestic drop of about 62% for a two-week global total of only $91,532,000. The charting for this movie now projects that it will only make between $130,760,000 and $183,064,000 by the end of its run, which would equate to roughly -$50 million in losses. The only saving grace for Ballerina financially is that Lionsgate apparently pre-sold the distribution rights for the film before its release, which should be more than enough to cover the gap that the movie is projected to end with (at least according to some, like Valliant Renegade). When you add in potential VOD and physical media sales, Ballerina is set to be the worst-performing of the John Wick franchise but will ultimately bring in money.
Finally, when it comes to the box office for Lilo and Stitch, the only “bad” news that I can point to as of right now is that the movie is not likely to hit $1 billion, as had been thought was a very good possibility (if not even guaranteed) for the last several weeks. The reason for this change is that the box office, both domestically and internationally, has slowed down quite a bit after being in theaters for about four weeks. The latest report of $825,971,809 is objectively very good for the studio, as Lilo and Stich’s budget was only about $100 million, and the marketing costs were likely an additional $100 million on top. Though this does not change the financial success of the movie and the fact that it will likely still be able to reach between $900-$950 million, it is still another sign that the global box office is not a guaranteed result no matter how good your opening weekend or 1st two weekends end up being.
Check out my latest box office videos on my YouTube channel!
If you want further analysis on these or any other films, check out the full charting I do over at my website. Have a wonderful rest of your day, and, as always, God bless!
(If you ever want further insight into my methodology, see my previous articles HERE and HERE and the RCC method I use to break down movies internationally HERE.)
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