4/19/10 Update: Kick-Ass actually led the weekend with $19.8 million, How to Train Your Dragon at #2 with $19.6 million. Lionsgate could be counting Thursday night grosses for the superhero film, bringing it to #1. What follows is my reaction from Sunday.

You read that title correctly: DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon came in first place this weekend after hanging in the top five ever since its #1 debut the weekend of March 26^th. It made a quiet $20 million. Here’s my guess as to why: the only two wide releases opening last Friday were the R-rated Kick-Ass and the R-rated Death at a Funeral. What’s a parent with children to do on a Saturday afternoon? Why, go to a PG movie of course. After Kick-Ass rocked Friday with $7.5 million (I’d like to consider that a win) it fell prey on Saturday to HTTYD’s $9.2 million as well as Date Night’s $7.7 million. The movie’s total is up to $158.6 million in about four weeks.

I was really rooting for our anti-hero Kick-Ass to shock everyone with a first place bow. Sadly, that was not the case. Matthew Vaughn’s hyped epic managed to rally only $19.8 million in the long haul, less than even Watchmen’s $55.2 million debut last year. Much as I enjoyed How to Train Your Dragon, I loved Kick-Ass even more. Maybe not even for the movie’s story, but the story of the movie. It’s amazing this thing was even put onto screens in the first place. I wanted Kick-Ass to become a profitable success as to encourage more film studios to take risks. Not play it safe with Clash of the Titans or The Last Song, obvious money-makers, but a movie so over-the-top and indifferent it actually got people excited to see it. The restricted rating must not have helped 14-year-old fanboys get into a showing any more than it did make middle-aged couples plan a date night around it. In more positive news, it did beat director Vaughn’s last effort Stardust, which opened to $9.2 million.

Date Night fell 31.4% to third with $17.3 million, a $49.2 million total so far. On a $55 million budget Shawn Levy’s action-packed rom-com is sure to make back its budget, and maybe even a little more in shear profit, and then quickly fade away. The other big release this weekend Death at a Funeral, Nail LaBute’s American remake of a burial gone very badly came to mediocre reviews (39% on Rotten Tomatoes) and started off with $17 million. Not surprisingly, it conquered Frank Oz’s original’s debut of $1.3 million in 2007, as well as defeating LaBute’s previous film Lakeview Terrace, which opened with $15 million in 2008.

In hopefully Clash of the Titans’s last weekend in the top five, Louis Leterrier’s reboot dropped 40.8% to #5 with $15.8 million. The movie’s domestic total is now $133 million.

Out of the top five-

• First time writer-director Derrick Borte’s The Joneses, about a product placement disguised as a suburban family and starring Demi Moore, began with $554,000 playing on 193 screens and garnering $2,870 per.
• William Dear’s long-delayed mini-league sports flick The Perfect Game opened with $494,000 on 417 screens.
• Oscar-winning foreign language film The Secret in Their Eyes, following one man’s investigation of a past murder, had a $176,000 debut with an impressive $17,600 per-screen average.
• A movie I’m dying to see, Banksy’s street art doc Exit Through the Gift Shop grossed $166,000 on only eight screens. The Sundance favorite also had an awesome $20,750 per-screen average, the highest of a movie playing in more than one theater. I can’t wait for an expansion so I can finally check this out!
• James Ivory’s drama The City of Your Final Destination, starring Anthony Hopkins, made $22,000 on a single screen.
• Boston Film Festival prodigy Handsome Harry managed $13,500 at four theaters.
• Public school education documentary The Cartel began with $4,100 on two screens.

Here are the box office results according to studio estimates Sunday-

1. 1. How to Train Your Dragon…$20 million
2. 2. Kick-Ass…$19.8 million
3. 3. Date Night…$17.3 million
4. 4. Death at a Funeral (2010)…$17 million
5. 5. Clash of the Titans (2010)…$15.8 million
6. 6. The Last Song…$5.8 million
7. 7. Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too?…$4.2 million
8. 8. Hot Tub Time Machine…$3.5 million
9. 9. Alice in Wonderland (2010)…$3.5 million
10. 10. The Bounty Hunter…$3.2 million