"Couples Retreat" tops North America box office

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- Mediocre comedy "Couples Retreat" from Universal Studios elbowed last week's No. 1 "Zombieland" aside to lead the North American box office with 35.3 million dollars in ticket sales in three days over the weekend, preliminary estimates released by North American box office authorities show Sunday.

"Couples Retreat" features "Swingers" co-stars Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau in the tale of four couples at a South Pacific island therapy resort. Although it has received unfavorable reviews by film critics during the screening, the film was helped by the fact that there were no any other new releases during the same period and dominated the chart with solid lead. Women accounted for 61 percent of the audience, while 56 percent of the audience was aged30 and older, according to statistics released by Universal.

No.2 and No.3 spots were taken by two of Sony's classical money-earners. "Zombieland," a horror comedy starring Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg that focuses on two men having to find a way to survive a world overrun by zombies, has slipped to second place with 15 million dollars.

"Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs", a 3-D cartoon, was reduced to No. 3 with 12 million dollars. It has fetched a total of 96.3 million dollars over four weeks' run and is expected to gross 100 million dollars later this week.

At fourth place is Disney's re-release of "Toy Story"/"Toy Story 2" double 3-D feature with nearly 7.7 million dollars. It has harvested a total of 22.7 million dollars over two weekends.

To everybody's surprise, a micro-budgeted fright flick "Paranormal Activity" from Paramount rose to No.5 in its first full weekend after two weeks of midnight-only screenings, pulling in 7.1 million dollars in just 160 cinemas, a fraction of the theater count for other top releases.