“This is getting out of hand! Now there are two of them!”
That’s what so many box office analysts and film observers must be saying after this weekend’s box office frame, which solidified that Universal/DreamWorks Animation can also make bank with live-action remakes of animated features. Disney no longer has a monopoly on this cursed market. “There are two of them”, indeed. The live-action How to Train Your Dragon grossed $83.7 million on its opening weekend, beneath the five biggest Disney remake domestic bows, but still a tremendous start.
That's nearly double the first animated Dragon's $43 million bow and a little more than 50% above How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World's $55 million debut from 2019. People still love Toothless and Hiccup, those original Dragon films have a profoundly personal place in the hearts of moviegoers under the age of 30. Marketing this as such a reverent loving take on this beloved saga was a recipe for box office success, especially over Father's Day weekend.
The two biggest movies in America this weekend were both live-action remakes of animated movies directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois. That's a good sign for the culture. Anywho, second place was Lilo & Stitch, which fell 52% to gross another $15.5 million. Its domestic gross now stands at $366.37 million, making it the second-biggest movie ever launched over Memorial Day weekend, only behind Top Gun: Maverick. It's a toss-up right now if this has enough juice in the tank to surpass A Minecraft Movie's $423.7 million haul to become the year's biggest movie domestically so far, but it's still far and away the year's third biggest feature in this territory.
Once again, audiences proved that they will come out to see romantic movies on the big screen. This time, the example of this truth was Celine Song’s Materialists, which grossed a robust $12 million on opening weekend. That’s the third-biggest domestic opening weekend ever for an A24 film, only behind Civil War’s $25.5 million bow and Hereditary’s 2018 launch.
It’s also only the fifth A24 title to ever open above $10 million in North America, following War, Hereditary, Talk to Me, and Heretic. Materialists also surpassed the entire domestic run of Past Lives in just three days and came in only slightly behind the domestic bows of major studio 2020s rom-com's No Hard Feelings and Ticket to Paradise. Terrific numbers all around, especially since none of the film's three leads have extensive box office experience headlining hits out of major franchises.
Seriously, though, Materialists reflects a vivid urge from moviegoers to see rom-coms theatrically. Remember how Anyone But You legged out to nearly $90 million domestically? Or how Bridges Jones: Mad About The Boy is still the year's 13th biggest movie at the worldwide box office despite getting sent to Peacock in North America? Or how Ticket to Paradise and The Lost City made more than Morbius and Moonfall globally in 2022? We desperately need more than two of these dropping theatrically a year, the marketplace is just craving out for more titles of this nature.
It used to be the norm for these titles to be as plentiful year-round at multiplexes as horror films are today. The Numbers, for instance, shows that roughly 16 rom-com’s got theatrical wide releases in 2007! Hopefully, Materialists inspires more indie studios like A24, Neon, Mubi, and others to pursue wider release rom-coms. There’s certainly money to be made in this field that the major studios keep ignoring. Heck, Materialists, if it even does “just” 2.5 times its opening weekend, it will gross $30 million domestically, making it the eighth-biggest A24 movie ever in North America. Lionsgate would kill for that kind of domestic haul right now.
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning had by far the lowest weekend-to-weekend decline in the top ten, dipping only 31%. That's despite losing all those IMAX screens it monopolized for three weekends. Grossing another $10.3 million, Reckoning has now grossed $166.31 million. Ballerina, meanwhile, rounded out the top five with another $9.4 million, a worrisome 62% plummet from last weekend. After ten days, this John Wick spin-off has grossed $41.83 million.
Karate Kid: Legends grossed another $5 million (a 42% drop) for a $44.15 million haul. Fellow May 2025 holdover Final Destination: Bloodlines added another $3.9 million for a domestic haul of $130.64 million. The Phoenician Scheme, meanwhile, grossed another $3.05 million. Its 51% second wide release weekend drop was slightly better than Asteroid City's 53% second wide release frame drop. Scheme has now grossed $12.7 million.
The Life of Chuck expanded into 1,072 theaters this frame and grossed $2.14 million. Nothing extraordinary, but it also didn’t crater after an underwhelming limited release bow last weekend. Plus, its numbers were perfectly decent for a summertime indie in the 2020s. Compared to last June's arthouse titles, Chuck's wide release bow was only down 8% from Thelma's debut and up 37% from the $1.57 million bow of Kinds of Kindness when it expanded into 490 locations. Still, The Life of Chuck has only grossed $2.44 million after ten days, and Neon had to be hoping for a bit more after its marketing campaign. The movie’s terrific, though, and that’s what’s important. It’ll find its audience down the line.
Sinners rounded out the top ten in its ninth weekend, grossing another $1.47 million (down 48% from last frame) for a $275.48 million gross. Bring Her Back dropped 60% and earned another $1.41 million for a $17.65 million domestic haul. Now playing in only 910 theaters, Thunderbolts* (in probably its last frame of wide release) fell another 50% to gross another $1.2 million for a $188.75 million domestic total. Dan Da Dan: Evil Eye dropped 79% after its opening weekend last frame to gross another $673,174. It's now taken in $5.06 million.
The Unholy Trinity, distributed by Roadside Attractions, grossed only $559,610 from 771 theaters for a $725 per-theater average. Tatami opened in a single theater and grossed $16,200.
The top ten movies domestically this weekend grossed roughly $145 million. That’s down from this same frame last weekend when 2024 finally exploded with the gargantuan opening of Inside Out 2. This was the 24th weekend of 2025, and compared to the 24th weekends of past year, the June 13-15, 2025 frame came in a bit under expectations.
After all, in 2018, this was the weekend Incredibles 2 launched to the biggest animated movie opening weekend ever and took the whole top ten to $258 million. In 2017, Cars 3 opened to a weak bow for summertime Pixar titles, but it still debuted to $53 million while Wonder Woman and newcomer All Eyez On Me each made over $26+ million. At least this newest 2025 frame was above 2019's 24th weekend, when Men in Black: International led the Father's Day marketplace with a meek opening weekend.
How to Train Your Dragon scoring the 16th biggest domestic June opening weekend shows that the marketplace is fine, we just need more movies (when have I ever said that before?). It doesn’t help that Disney’s diluting of the Pixar brand name (unless it’s an Inside Out sequel) by sending titles like Soul, Luca, and Turning Red to streaming has damaged a key puzzle piece of the last 20 years of the June box office landscape. Next weekend’s Elio will determine if this studio's release, which used to buoy the June landscape, are fully back. Returning to this weekend's new releases, Dragon and Materialists still turned in strong figures this weekend. Better yet, while this frame is weaker than usual for mid-June, it’s still a fine haul in raw numbers while impending releases F1, Jurassic World Rebirth, and Superman are bound to further liven up the marketplace. Whether or not those upcoming box office layers inspire me to turn to further Nute Gunray quotes, that remains to be seen.