Comcast Corporation CMCSA stock could benefit from a strong 2025 film lineup, which could help its Peacock streaming platform and help offset weakness from cable subscribers.
The company’s live-action “How to Train Your Dragon” film is already setting franchise records.
What Happened: While not all live-action remakes of animated films are hits for Disney, Comcast’s Dreamworks Animation segment has an early hit with “How to Train Your Dragon.”
The film grossed $83.7 million domestically in its opening weekend and has a total worldwide gross of $197.8 million, as reported by Deadline. This total is the best domestic opening weekend for the franchise, breaking the totals of the previous three animated hits.
Here’s a look at the past box office of the first three animated films:
- “How to Train Your Dragon” (2010): $217.6 million domestic, $494.9 million worldwide, $43.7 million domestic opening
- “How to Train Your Dragon 2” (2014): $177.0 million domestic, $621.5 million worldwide, $49.5 million domestic opening
- “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” (2019): $160.9 million domestic, $540.0 million worldwide, $55.0 million domestic opening
The latest film opening is significantly higher than any of the animated films and gave movie theaters a strong Father’s Day weekend total of $155 million. The total was down from last year’s $214 million, helped by “Inside Out 2,” but ahead of a pre-COVID 2019 total of $135.9 million.
While the film’s success doesn’t mean we’ll get live-action “Shrek” or “Kung Fu Panda” movies anytime soon, it does mean that Comcast has another extension of one of its strong Dreamworks Animation franchises. The studio is already working on a sequel to the live-action film, which will be released on June 11, 2027.
Strong demand for the film’s trailers, which had three-quarters of a billion views before the release, helped. The movie studio also worked on several promotional campaigns, including with Roblox, Burger King, WWE, the NBA, and the NHL.
A “How to Train Your Dragon”-themed game within Roblox has had over 10 million plays and is on pace to be Universal’s most-played Roblox integration.
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Why It’s Important: The success of “How to Train Your Dragon” could have reciprocal effects on the company’s streaming platform that will land the film in the future and the company’s theme parks division with a new Epic Universe park in Florida featuring the franchise in several immersive worlds.
It also sets Comcast up for a strong 2025 box office showing with another top hit. The movie is already ranked 12th domestically for year-to-date box office. Comcast’s only current top-10 film is “Dog Man,” which had $98.0 million in domestic box office and will likely fall from the top 10 soon.
Comcast had four top-ten films domestically last year and ranked second by studios at $1.74, trailing only Disney.
The company’s upcoming film slate includes a couple of Dreamworks Animation with “The Bad Guys 2” in August and “Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie” in September.
Comcast also has several upcoming blockbusters including July’s “Jurassic World Rebirth” and November’s “Wicked: For Good.”
Last year’s “Wicked” ranked third domestically and was one of the top-grossing films worldwide for the year. The last Jurassic World franchise movie came out in 2022 and grossed $376.9 million domestically and over $1 billion worldwide.
A continued strong showing by “How to Train Your Dragon” could help pad Comcast’s box office total as it heads into the release of other highly anticipated films in 2025.
CMCSA Price Action: Comcast stock traded at $34.98 on Monday, compared to a 52-week trading range of $31.44 to $45.31. Comcast stock is down 6.5% year-to-date in 2025.
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