娱乐英语新闻:"The Martian" sits atop box office this weekend

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- "The Martian" continued to soar at the box office in the United States and Canada this weekend, taking in an estimated 37 million U.S. dollars over the weekend.

The latest space film starring Matt Damon as an astronaut stranded on Mars made 108.7 million dollars in ten days, becoming the second movie to cross 100 million dollars this weekend.

Compared with the other two popular space films, "The Martian" is currently running 12 percent ahead of the 96.9 million dollars that "Interstellar" had grossed after ten days of wide release in 2014 and 11 percent behind the 122.3 million dollars in ten-day take of 2013's "Gravity".

Adam Sandler's "Hotel Transylvania 2" clinched the second spot, taking in 20.3 million dollars during the weekend.

The 3D computer animated film from Sony Pictures Animation declined 39 percent from last weekend, but still earned 116.8 million dollars over its three weeks of exhibition, according to studio estimates gathered by Rentrak.

Warner Bros' "Pan" claimed the third place in its opening weekend, with 15.5 million dollars in estimated sales. Played in 3,515 theaters, the Peter Pan origin story starred by Hugh Jackman was directed Joe Wright.

"Pan" scored a "B+" from first night moviegoers on CinemaScore and it received just 23 percent of approval rate from critics on RottenTomatoes.

Rounding out the 10 most-popular movies this week were "The Intern" (8.7 million dollars), "Sicario" (7.4 million), "Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials" (5.3 million), "The Walk" (3.7 million), "Black Mass" (3.1 million), "Everest" (3 million) and "The Visit" (2.4 million).