Box Office Week: How to Train Your Dragon 3 closes trilogy with a franchise best debut with $55.5M at #1. Alita: Battle Angel drops 58% in second weekend for $12M at #2 but scores $65M debut in China. Fighting with My Family expands to wide release with underwhelming $8M at #4.

RankTitleDomestic Gross (Weekend)Worldwide Gross (Cume)Week #Percentage ChangeBudget1How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World$55,527,000$274,927,0001N/A$129M2Alita: Battle Angel$12,000,000$263,358,3912-58%$170M3The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part$10,015,000$136,619,0393-51.9%$100M4Fighting with My Family$8,012,000$8,227,0212+5,673.2%$11M5Isn't It Romantic$7,510,000$33,768,7422-47.3%$31MNotable Box Office StoriesHow to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World - Today the scrubs will face the wrath of the true patrician trilogy. You can keep your Back to the Futures and your Godfathers, the king has arrived and he's voiced by Jay Baruchel. How to Train Your Dragon has become an incredibly surprising critical darling of a franchise and as the final film of this trilogy (spin-offs tho) the film arrives with a franchise best #1 debut with $55.5M. This is especially good news as the franchise has never had huge openings but they are great at just sticking around, with the first scoring a massive 5x multiplier. However there was a bit of domestic fatigue at least with the second one which opened better than the first but ended up grossing less by the end. That could be the case here but with a better opening and the failure of the Lego Movie 2 (it has dropped to $10M by its third weekend) HTTYD 3 could possibly pass it.How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (cont.) - However where HTTYD 2 saw massive improvement was in the foreign market, where it grossed almost $200M more internationally that the first. That would definitely explain then why 3 (and it is three, screw your subtitle for better SEO) had such an a major international push a full month before opening in the US. The film has grossed $216M so far overseas, mostly lead by Australia ($15M), Brazil ($13M), France ($12.5M), Germany ($11.3M), Mexico ($17.3M), and the UK ($15M). So while this is will be a far cry from a final $1B bow (you plebs of the world) it seems to have a very good chance of beat the second film's current record of $621M. And thus that is how the greatest franchise ends, with neither a whimper or a bang, just simple quiet perfect like Hiccup holding his hand out to Toothless in an act of grace and mercy.Fighting with My Family - The WWE tried a new attempt into the mainstream, a charming family dramedy and the results were a tombstone piledriver straight to the mat (look I haven't watched since the Attitude Era, forgive my old man references) as it expanded into wide release with an underwhelming #4 with $8.2M. The film was directed by Stephen Merchant, who is of course most famous for his breakout uncredited role as CTU Staffer on the 6th season of 24, and is a biopic about a rather recent WWE star Paige, her quick rise to fame in the WWE, and her family who are all professional wrestlers. While Merchant is definitely a major force here as writer/director it's also clear this was a publicity push for WWE by hoping to give an inspirational story angle to a genre of entertainment that's usually focused on ya know chairs to the face and soap opera dramatics.Fighting with My Family (cont.) - Telling the biopic of a woman who isn't even 30 years old yet is definitely a very clear attempt from WWE to get more attention to the brand with that demo, younger women. So in that sense I would say this opening is a failure and shows there isn't that deep of a love of the brand outside of the brand, if that makes sense. Now to be clear as just a film it should do fine. It carries a very small $11M budget (clearly the Rock did his cameos for favors) so it should eek up a profit when all is said and done. It's just not the same kind of attention WWE probably wanted. However there's always that second life. Come on Vince, sell it to Netflix. People will come for the Pugh, they'll stay for the wrastling. Side note: very hard not to do a Jerry Lawler bit this whole write-up.Oscar Movie Round-Up - Nothing much to say for this week as the Oscars ended the weekend but let's theorize for how all the winners and losers will fair next weekend. The Oscars ended by awarding Driving Miss Daisy Green Book best picture, which is definitely the most likely to have a major bump next weekend, as most of its success has come after the awards season began and I see it continuing in that way with it's major upset victory. Roma won a lot but unless there's another big expansion to come it will just have to be seeing it on Netflix for any who haven't caught it yet. The other one I see getting a big boost box office wise is Bohemian Rhapsody which walked away with four wins including Best Actor. It's already had an insane run, but expect a few more million to come its way soon. The Favourite looked to be leaving with nothing but ended up shocking with a surprise Best Actress win for Olivia Colman, which is a big enough victory to give it one more solid push.Oscar Movie Round-Up (cont.) - Free Solo also scored a surprise victory and could get a push though it is set to premiere on March 3rd on NatGeo so expect a bigger push to watch on TV versus theater. Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse wasn't a surprise Best Animated Feature win to Oscar predictors but may be for general audiences so wait for that to see if curiosity gives it a bump. Also worth looking at is what the bigger losers will fair. Vice walked away with just one technical award so expect that to falter. The Wife is absolutely done. A Star is Born (2018) walked away with just Best Song which people have already heard approximately 3,457 times by now so don't expect that to get a bump. And finally Mary Poppins Returns was still sticking around just in case of a win so I expect a big drop for that especially as theaters make room for Captain Marvel.Films Reddit Wants to FollowThis is a segment where we keep a weekly tally of currently showing films that aren't in the Top 5 that fellow redditors want updates on. If you'd like me to add a film to this chart, make a comment in this thread.TitleDomestic Gross (Weekly)Domestic Gross (Cume)Worldwide Gross (Cume)BudgetWeek #A Star is Born (2018)$1,221,510$210,933,198$424,433,198$36M21Bohemian Rhapsody$1,767,277$213,138,500$860,881,272$52M17Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse$3,284,121$184,905,025$359,717,802$90M11Aquaman$2,689,445$332,940,547$1,138,840,547$200M10Holmes and Watson$25,711$30,573,626$40,333,667$42M8The Wandering Earth?$3,883,544$606,867,200$50M4Notable Film ClosingsTitleDomestic Gross (Cume)Worldwide Gross (Cume)BudgetFantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald$159,555,901$653,355,901$200MWidows$42,402,632$75,984,700$42MSecond Act$39,282,227$71,282,227$16MAs always r/boxoffice is a great place to share links and other conversations about box office news.Also you can see the archive of all Box Office Week posts at r/moviesboxoffice (which have recently been updated).My Letterboxd: https://ift.tt/2Q79jjT via /r/movies https://ift.tt/2tEPvrk