Dragon stokes up box office with $43.3M debut

Distributed by Paramount, the DreamWorks Animation adventure came in well behind the studio's last cartoon comedy, "Monsters vs. Aliens," which opened with $59.3 million over the same weekend last year.

How to Train Your Dragon" breathed a bit of box-office fire with a $43.3 million opening weekend and a No. 1 debut, according to studio estimates Sunday.

With strong reviews and enthusiastic responses from viewers in exit polls, DreamWorks expects "How to Train Your Dragon" to have more staying power than "Monsters vs. Aliens" in later weekends, though.

People love the film, so we are anticipating we'll benefit from strong word of mouth going forward," said Anne Globe, head of marketing for DreamWorks.

"How to Train Your Dragon," featuring the voices of Jay Baruchel and The united states Ferrera in the tale of a Viking youth who tames a fire-breathing reptile, did outperform some other recent animated movies, among them "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," which opened with $30.3 million last September.

Disney's "Alice in Wonderland," which had been No. 1 the previous two weekends, slipped to second place with $17.3 million. It raised its domestic total to $293.1 million and its worldwide haul to $656 million.

John Cusack's raunchy comedy "Hot Tub Time Machine" had a lukewarm No. 3 debut of $13.7 million. Released by MGM, the movie features Cusack as part of a group of losers hurled back by a time-traveling hot tub to the 1980s, where they have a chance to set their lives right.

"How to Train Your Dragon" pulled in 68 percent of its revenue from 3-D presentation, another triumph for the digital technology that allows theaters to show movies in two dimensions.