THIS DRAGON HAS LEGS!

How to Train Your Dragon retook its lead at the box office over the weekend even though its ticket sales totaled just $15.4 million. Several box-office analysts agreed that it won “by default” as moviegoers shunned two new releases, The Back-up Plan and The Losers. (Overall, the box office dipped to its lowest level of the year.) Dragon, the DreamWorks Animation 3D film, which many agreed had opened five weeks ago with disappointing results ($43.7 million), has shown only small declines week after week, and its 22-percent slide this weekend was its deepest thus far. Its total gross has now reached $178.3 million, putting it ahead of the studio’s Monsters vs. Aliens at the same point last year. The sole standout of the weekend may have been Disneynature’s Oceans, which opened with $6.1 million on 1,206 screens. That made it the third-highest-grossing documentary debut ever, behind Fahrenheit 9/11 and its predecessor, 2009’s Earth. However, Earth opened with $8.8 million on 1,804 screens — a third more than Oceans. On a per-screen basis, Oceans topped every movie in wide release over the weekend (and also topped Earth). The weekend’s results appeared especially inauspicious for the fledgling CBS Films, whose inaugural release, January’s Extraordinary Measures, starring Harrison Ford, turned out to be an extraordinary flop. The Back-up Plan may not have been the utter disaster that the studio’s first film was, but, with ticket sales of only $12.2 million from 3,280 theaters, it was hardly anything to boost the confidence of studio executives. It was also nothing to recharge the movie career of its star, Jennifer Lopez, who has not appeared on a theater screen in four years. But The Losers was an even bigger loser, arriving with just $9.4 million and destined to fall way below that next week when it faces the direct competition of Nightmare on Elm Street and the following week when Iron Man 2 arrives. Meanwhile, Kick-Ass, which eked out a win last week, showed that it has no legs to do much kicking anymore. It tumbled to fifth place with $9.3 million.

The top ten films over the weekend, according to final figures compiled by Box Office Mojo (figures in parentheses represent total gross to date):
1. How to Train Your Dragon, Paramount/DreamWorks Animation, $15,350,213, 5 Wks. ($178,345,927); 2. The Back-up Plan, CBS Films, $12,201,710, (New); 3. Date Night, 20th Century Fox, $10,461,223, 4 Wks. ($63,332,819); 4. The Losers, Warner Bros., $9,406,348, (New); 5. Kick-Ass, Lionsgate, $9,342,398, 2 Wks. ($34,708,222); 6. Clash of the Titans, Warner Bros., $8,924,180, 4 Wks. ($145,563,557); 7. Death at a Funeral, Sony, $8,022,762, 2 Wks. ($28,471,939); 8. Oceans, Disney/Disneynature, $6,058,958, 1 Wk. ($8,525,488 — From Thursday); 9. The Last Song, Disney, $3,760,816, 4 Wks. ($55,459,487); 10. Alice in Wonderland, Disney, $2,264,097, 8 Wks. ($327,537,023).