Universal proved that the year of 2019 might not be cursed after all, as their animated epic How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World opened to a very impressive $55.5 million in its opening weekend – not including an additional $2.5 million it pulled in from early screenings several weeks ago. Meanwhile, Fox’s Alita: Battle Angel failed to translate its word of mouth into a solid second weekend hold, while Fighting with My Family did decent business in its nationwide expansion.

How to Train Your Dragon took off with about $6 million more than its predecessor opened to back in 2014. This is especially impressive considering Dreamworks sequels have a tendency to perform worse than the originals, though The Hidden World managed to buck that trend. So why did Dragon do so well while The LEGO Movie 2 failed? Interestingly, The Hidden World only went up 28% on Saturday, while LEGO was up around 82%. The higher Saturday jump would imply that LEGO was more driven by younger families, while the bigger Friday may imply that Dragon had an older, nostalgia driven audience that wanted to see it as soon as possible. That would also explain why the films previews were so much higher than LEGO 2 (which also held early previews, but did considerably less). Dragon also had a much bigger Thursday night, adding to this theory.

If Dragon can wind up close to $200 million domestic, it’s a huge win, especially considering the relatively low $129 million budget.

Meanwhile, Alita: Battle Angel failed to show any staying power after it opened above expectations last weekend. The title pulled in just $12 million this weekend, raising its total to $60.6 million after 11 days in release. While its $42 million was impressive, it’s important to remember just how much fan demand was burned off with that opening. Not only did it benefit from opening on Thursday, it also had an additional $2.4 million from previews, which included Wednesday night as well as early fan screenings in IMAX 3D and Dolby earlier in the week. Throw in President’s Day, and there simply wasn’t much of an audience left. At this point, Alita would be lucky to double its $42 million opening.

MGM decided to counterprogram with their wrestling comedy Fighting with My Family opened on par with expectations with $8 million from 2,711 locations. Word of mouth has been very strong per Cinemascore and ComScore, and the 28% jump on Saturday also suggests audiences are pleased with what they get. Considering the relatively niche appeal and lack of marketing, there simply wasn’t much of a chance for this to appeal outside of the built in wrestling audience, and it appears that MGM managed to get most of them to see the film. Considering it cost just $11 million to produce, however, this has to be seen as somewhat of a win.

Last weekends other releases didn’t impress either, as Happy Death Day 2U and Isn’t It Romantic were both down 47% compared to last weekend, giving them new totals of just $21 and $33 million respectively. That’s not terrible for Death Day considering the much lower budget, but it’s hard to call either of these a win.