The Boxoffice Podium
Forecasting the Top 3 Movies at the Domestic Box Office | June 13 – June 15, 2025
Week 24 | June 13 – June 15, 2025
1. How to Train Your Dragon
Universal Pictures | NEW
Weekend Range: $80M – $90M
Showtime Marketshare: 30%
Pros
- The How to Train Your Dragon animated trilogy can boast $1.6 billion in worldwide grosses, not to mention its own brand-spanking-new theme park land at Universal Studios Florida. Toothless the dragon looks 100% identifiable in his new live-action incarnation, as did Stitch. The reviews are decent enough at a current 80% on Rotten Tomatoes, with many critics seeming to tolerate the 1-to-1 remake style of original animation director Dean DeBlois. Call it nostalgic comfort food. If this picture works, DreamWorks has a whole library of hits to redo, including Shrek and Trolls. IMAX domination will help boost the weekend, as it did for the new Mission: Impossible over the last three frames.
Cons
- For a property that has had triple the theatrical installments of Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon is tracking well behind the Disney remake’s 3-Day debut of $146M. This could be due to the amount of time that has elapsed since DreamWorks’ original animated Dragon hit theaters (15 years) vs the original Stitch (23 years). It could also be that the Iron Age sword and sorcery feel is less appealing/scary to the smallest viewers. The series peaked domestically with the original ($217.85M), and it’s only been six years since the third movie bottomed out at $160.79M. Expect the international take to help propel this new one into profitability, especially with the incoming Pixar competition from Elio coming to domestic theaters week.
2. Lilo & Stitch
Walt Disney Pictures | Week 4
Weekend Range: $14M – $18M
Showtime Marketshare: 12%
Pros
- Disney’s live-action Lilo & Stitch Xerox continued to ride a wave of enthusiasm as it nabbed the top spot for the third straight weekend with $32.36M (down slightly from Sunday estimates) for a current domestic total of $335.65M. This week it should topple the live-action Aladdin ($355.55M) and The Jungle Book ($364M), though its chances of taking down 2017’s Beauty and the Beast ($504M) are as slim as the alien Pleakley.
Cons
- It’s BBQ season, and Stitch is set to get charred by Toothless as How to Train Your Dragon becomes the new hotness for kiddies by essentially pulling from the Disney animated-to-live-action playbook. Our panel expects at least a -50% drop for Lilo & Stitch in light of the fiery competition with a still respectable $14M-$18M Frame 4. For this point in its domestic run, the movie is a bit ahead of Moana 2 ($329M), which could bode well for eventually hitting $1 Billion.
3. From the World of John Wick: Ballerina
Lionsgate | Week 2
Weekend Range: $10M – $14M
Showtime Marketshare: 9%
Pros
- Although it disappointed with a $24.5M opening, Ballerina scored big time with audiences, who gave it the franchise’s biggest Rotten Tomatoes audience score to-date (94%) alongside an “A-” CinemaScore. The good news going into this second frame is that the tumble could be less than -50% due to 76% of the audience arriving in the 25+ age bracket, which is not the target demo for How to Train Your Dragon.
Cons
- Lionsgate’s John Wick: Chapter 4 opened to $73.8M two years ago, and while a spin-off always had the potential to perform below the Keanu Reeves-led mainline films, this feels like it simply wasn’t enough to compel audiences. The minor presence of Reeves in this prequel meant zero suspense about the fate of his beloved character (he already met it in 4), and Ana de Armas is shaping up to be a major star with pull someday… but not yet. The movie will top out well under $100M domestic, although enough of the people who saw it liked it enough that it doesn’t tarnish the Wick brand.
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