娱乐英语新闻:"Ender's Game" tops North American box

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Film "Ender's Game" became the biggest winner in North America as it outperformed all its cinematic rivals during the weekend, while "Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa" slipped to the second slot.

The futuristic "Ender's Game," based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Orson Scott Card, stars 16-year-old newcomer Asa Butterfield as a boy selected by the International Military to protect and save the human race from the invading insect-like outer space villains.

Playing at 3,407 theaters in the United States and Canada, the movie, directed by Gavin Hood, was welcomed by both critics and audience, garnering a 62-percent approval rate from reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes and a strong "B+" on CinemaScore.

The Summit Entertainment sci-fi film debuted with 28 million U.S. dollars, according to an estimate from the distributor. However, it will need strong legs in order to make back its pricey 110-million-dollar budget for a much more competitive film arriving in theaters next weekend, namely, "Thor: The Dark World."

"Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa," a Paramount/MTV Films comedy, also held up well this weekend. The film saw its ticket sales tumble 36 percent this weekend to 20.5 million dollars and finish in the second place with 62.1 million dollars in total after two weekends of release.

This week's third and fourth slots were occupied by a pair of new releases. "Last Vegas," a CBS film starring Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro, Kevin Kline and Michael Douglas as four friends in their 60s who travel to Las Vegas for a bachelor party, debuted and ranked the third, with an estimated ticket revenue of 16.5 million dollars.

"Free Birds," the first feature film release by Reel FX Animation Studios and Relativity Media, which cost 55 million dollars to make, opened with 16.2 million dollars to finish the fourth.

Audiences responded more favorably to these newly released films than critics. According to reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, they earned only a 44-percent and 21-percent approval rate respectively, but moviegoers assigned them an "A-" CinemaScore apiece.

The 10 most popular films in North America this weekend, as estimated by studios, were "Gravity" (13.13 million dollars), "Captain Phillips" (8.5 million), "12 Years a Slave" (4.6 million), "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2" (4.2 million), "Carrie" (3.4 million) and "The Counselor" (3.2 million).