FREDDY DUE TO PUFF OUT DRAGON

This is the weekend when DreamWorks Animation’s dragon is expected to fall victim to Freddy Krueger. Several box-office forecasters are predicting that Warner Bros./New Line’s remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street will collect more than $30 million. But How to Train Your Dragon, which has shown surprisingly strong legs over the past five weeks in part because of the lack of family-film competition, will find itself up against not only Freddy but Summit Entertainment’s Furry Vengeance, aimed at the 10-and-under set. Both Dragon and Vengeance are expected to finish behind Nightmare with ticket sales in the low teens, but analysts say it’s a toss-up which film will wind up in second place and which in third, although most give Dragon a slight edge. All in all, it looks like another “down” weekend at the box office, the gurus say, as it gets set for the first week of the summer season next week with the arrival of Iron Man 2. Online ticket sites are already reporting that Iron Man 2 is selling more than five times as many tickets as the original installment did at this point. (And that movie opened with $98 million.)