DreamWorks Animations How To Train Your Dragon is about mythical creatures,but the films box-office performance owes more to the turtle and the hare,as it shows the race does not always go to the swift. The film about a Viking who domesticates a dragon had been expected to open in the $65 million to $70 million range the weekend of March 26-28. When it made $43.3 million,many Hollywood watchers viewed that as a disappointment. But since then,Dragon has become one of the most consistent box-office performers of recent months,dropping only 21 per cent this past weekend compared to the previous weekend,to rake in $19.6 million.Box-office analysts said Dragon and even the record-breaking Avatar show that judging a films ultimate performance by its opening weekend can be a losing game. In this era of social-networking websites,audiences reaction to movies they enjoy can markedly reverse the box-office fortune of films,analysts said.You can sometimes buy your way to a huge opening weekend with a massive marketing campaign,what you cant buy is word-of-mouth, said Paul Dergarabedian,president of tracking firm Hollywood.com box-office.DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc suffered an 8 per cent drop in its share price to $39.34 the day after Dragons opening weekend. The stock has not fully recovered from that plummet,but recently it closed up 2.4 per cent to $41.57. BETTER THAN MONSTERS?So far,Dragon has made $335.3 million in worldwide ticket sales,according to tracking firm box-office Mojo.DreamWorks chief executive Jeffrey Katzenberg told Reuters recently that it was still too early to tell if Dragon would beat the $381.5 million in ticket sales for the companys 2008 hit Monsters Vs. Aliens.Certainly the performance of (Dragon,) subsequent to its opening weekend,which was a little soft,has been great and was very promising, Katzenberg said. Thats word-of-mouth,and I think the quality of the film and the reviews and how much people loved it really kicked into gear, he said. Marla Backer,an analyst with Hudson Square Research,said that the staying power of Dragon indicates it will likely outperform Monsters.Generally its premature to count a film out after the first weekend,unless its really significantly off from expectations, Backer said. Movies typically drop about 40 to 50 per cent from their first to second weekend,Dergarabedian said. But a number of recent films have done better than analysts had expected based on their opening.Dergarabedian pointed to last years action movie Taken,which opened to only $24.7 million in the U.S. and Canada but showed holding power and ended with $145 million. And Avatars record-breaking $2.7 billion performance at worldwide box-offices could not have been predicted from its opening tally of more than $230 million,analysts said. It remains to be seen if Lions Gate Entertainment Corps action comedy Kick-Ass can overcome a lower-than-expected opening. The film made $19.8 million.The studio says that exit polling shows that audiences liked Kick-Ass. And despite a scathing review from Roger Ebert,the film has a 78 per cent approval rating from critics at the website RottenTomatoes.com.
