Universal’ How to Train Your Dragon won the Juneteenth holiday box office race on Thursday with $9.7 million in ticket sales as it heads into its second weekend with an early domestic haul of nearly $125 million.
The live-action remake of DreamWorks Animation’s celebrated 2010 animated film is confident it will stay atop the chart in its sophomore outing despite the entry of two new summer event pics, Danny Boyle‘s 28 Years Later and Pixar’s Elio, both of which took advantage of the holiday by starting previews early in the day. (How to Train Your Dragon has a huge advantage in playing in Imax cinemas, and is eying bringing in another $35 million domestically this weekend.)
Boyle’s zombie sequel, from Sony, is reporting a preview gross of $5.8 million, enough to place second on Thursday — at least unofficially (previews grosses are ultimately folded into the opening-day gross, or in this instance, Friday’s haul). Sony is suggesting a weekend opening the $28 million to $30 million range, while tracking shows Boyle’s film coming in at $30 million or more.
So far, however, 28 Years Later, isn’t going over so well with audiences despite glowing reviews. Presently, the Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score is 92 percent, while the audience score is only 69 percent.
28 Years Later — the first in a planned trilogy — reunites Boyle with writer Alex Garland 25 years after 28 Days hit big screen and became a cult classic. Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams and Ralph Fiennes star in the pic, which is set nearly three decades after the events of the first film.
Disney/Pixar
Elio — an original film about a young boy whose wish to travel to outer space and interact with aliens comes true — earned $3 million from Thursday previews and select special access Wednesday screenings.
Tracking showed the animated film opening to $30 million in North America, although it is now eying an opening in the $20 million to $23 million. That means Pixar is braced for the movie suffering the worst three-day opening ever for the storied animation studio behind Elemental ($29.6 million) in June 2023 and its very first film, 1995’s Toy Story ($29.1 million), not adjusted for inflation. (Toy Story opened over Thanksgiving and amassed $39 million over the long five-day holiday weekend.)
At the time, Elemental‘s opening was called nothing short of a debacle, yet it turned into sleeper hit on its way to earning nearly $500 million globally. Pixar and parent company Disney are confident that Elio will have the same sort of staying power throughout the summer when kids are sprung from school. So far, Elio is graced with a better critics score on Rotten Tomatoes than Elemental. There’s not yet an audience score on RT.
Pixar has been struggling to find its footing in a world where original animated stories don’t open to the heights they once did — think north of $70 million — in the post-pandemic world. And during the pandemic years, then-Disney CEO Bob Chapek decided to send three Pixar titles straight to Disney+ domestically, including Turning Red, Luca and the Oscar-winning Soul, a decision rivals said taught families to wait to watch a film at home. (All three were considered streaming hits.)
But Pixar and Disney reversed course and are once again committed to telling original theatrical stories, mixed in with known IP, such as last year’s blockbuster and record-shattering Inside Out 2, the top-grossing pic of 2024, the top ever title for Pixar and the top animated of all time with more than $1.69 billion in worldwide ticket sales, not adjusted for inflation.
June 20, 2:31 p.m.: Updated with the latest box office estimates.