After three weekends of Alice in Wonderland dominating the box office, comes a 3D challenge in the form of DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon.
Dragon, directed by Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, is generating strong buzz and will open very wide in more than 4,000 cinemas.
The real battle, however, is over 3D screens. Dragon is expected to play in some 2,150 theaters with 3D screen capability, out of an estimated 2,300 such cinemas. That will bump Alice, which has been using most of those 3D screens for the past three weeks, down to 2D screens. Alice has ridden the surging success of 3D to a worldwide domestic gross of about $573 million.
While Dragon will be on the winning end of the 3D stick this weekend, it may be a short-lived victory with Warner Bros. set to put Clash of the Titans out in 3D next weekend.
Running as counter programming to Dragon is the screwball time-travel comedy Hot Tub Time Machine, opening in more than 2,700 cinemas.
Animation fans in select areas also will be on the lookout for the documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty, which opens in five cinemas in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco. The documentary, directed by Don Hahn, chronicles the rebirth of animation at Walt Disney Studios in the 1980s and 1990s using new audio interviews with the animators who worked there and executives such as Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg who led the charge.
