娱乐英语新闻:Disaster film "San Andreas" tops North American box office

LOS ANGELES, May 31 (Xinhua) -- "San Andreas", the film about massive tremors, led the North American box office with 53.2 million U.S. dollars in its opening weekend.

Directed by Brad Peyton, the film stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as a helicopter pilot who is searching for his wife and daughter during a massive earthquake that hits California.

The Warner Bros. film, co-produced with Village Roadshow Pictures, opened with 18.2 million dollars Friday, added 13 percent Saturday to take in 20.6 million dollars and is estimated to decline about 30 percent on Sunday to gross 14.4 million dollars, according to box office tracker boxoffice.com. 3D grosses represented 44 percent of the overall revenue for its first weekend.

First night moviegoers gave "San Andreas" a decent "A-" rating, while critics gave it a so-so 49 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

The audience breakdown for the film was nearly evenly split between genders. An estimated 70 percent of moviegoers were over the age of 25.

Universal's "Pitch Perfect 2" was in a distant second place in its third week, with 14.8 million dollars this weekend, declining a sharp 52 percent from last weekend's three-day frame. While it continues to be good in box office, "Pitch Perfect 2" has received 147.5 million dollars over three weeks in North America, and a worldwide total gross of 228.2 million dollars.

Disney's "Tomorrowland", the No.1 film in last weekend, was down two spots and a sharp 58 percent this weekend to rank third with 13.8 million dollars. Starring George Clooney, "Tomorrowland" has grossed 63.2 million dollars in ten days of its release.

Rounding out this weekend's top 10 movies in the U.S. and Canada were "Mad Max: Fury Road" (13.6 million dollars), "Avengers: Age Of Ultron" (10.9 million), "Aloha" (10 million), "Poltergeist" (7.8 million), "Far From The Maddening Crowd" (1.4 million), "Hot Pursuit" (1.4 million) and "Home" (1.2 million).