Dragon kind of ignites the box office

Swooping in on the back of a torrent of positive reviews, DreamWorks’ How To Train Your Dragon 3D soared straight to the top of the box office this weekend.

Snatching the number one spot from other 3D flick Alice In Wonderland , the CGI animation nabbed itself $43m in its opening weekend.

Which sort of pales in comparison to Alice ’s $116m debut three weeks back, and should have DreamWorks execs scratching their heads wondering where all that marketing went wrong.

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But considering how well-received the family flick has been by critics (it’s 97% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), we imagine positive word of mouth should boost Dragon in its second week of showing.

Dragon ’s roost-ruling pushed Alice into second place for its third week of release, in which it shrank to roughly a tenth of its original size and took just $17m, while John Cusack’s ‘80s-flavoured comedy Hot Tub Time Machine (below) obviously gave too much away with its tell-all title, only luring select audiences to the sound of $13m.

Meanwhile, Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler slipped one place down to fourth with The Bounty Hunter , taking $12.4m – paltry in comparison to its opening of $21m – and Chloe Moretz’s Diary Of A Wimpy Kid went from second to fifth place with $10m.

Avatar was out of the picture entirely this week for the first time since its release 100 days ago, evidently revving its engines for its DVD premiere, meaning that sixth place went to She’s Out Of My League , which scraped a further $3.5m from US pockets.

Matt Damon’s Green Zone slipped another place to seventh, taking a meagre $3.3m. It’s now accrued just $30m at the box office, a speck in comparison to Bourne Ultimatum ’s worldwide haul of $442m.

Rounding out the top ten, Shutter Island scooped $3.1m, Repo Men dropped its earnings by 50%, taking $3m (it’s now harvested just $11m at the box office, and has no doubt severely dented Jude Law’s earning prospects), while Our Family Wedding garnered itself $2.2m in receipts.

Will this week’s Clash Of The Titans provide another 3D threat to the box office’s current line-up? We imagine DreamWorks are looking a little shifty at the moment...

What did you see this weekend?