娱乐英语新闻:"Ride Along 2" passes "Star Wars" to top N. American box office

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- New action comedy movie "Ride Along 2" rose to the peak of the North American box office over the weekend as "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" has finally begun to lose sizzle after four weeks atop the chart.

The Universal Pictures film opened in the No. 1 spot this weekend, according to studio estimates, with a 34-million-U.S.-dollar premiere. Starring Ice Cube and Kevin Hart, the sequel debuted 18 percent below the 41.5-million-dollar three-day start of its 2014 precursor.

"Ride Along 2" received a "B+" rating from first-night moviegoers on CinemaScore. While that was a solid score, it was significantly softer than the "A" rating "Ride Along" received on CinemaScore.

"The Revenant," which holds 12 Academy Award nominations, was in second place with 29.5 million dollars in sales, down 26 percent from last weekend's sales.

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, it went into wide circulation two weeks ago, and grossed an impressive 87.6 million dollars after 10 days of wide release, according to Rentrak.

After leading the weekend box office for each of the past four frames, Disney's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" fell to third place this weekend with an estimated three-day take of 25.1 million dollars, 41 percent down from last weekend.

The seventh installment of "Star Wars" passed the 850 million dollars mark this weekend and is continuing to firm up its position as the highest grossing film of all-time in North America with 851 million dollars through 31 days of release.

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" is currently running 72.5 percent ahead of the 493.2-million-dollar 31-day take of "Avatar" and 44 percent ahead of the 590.7-million-dollar 31-day gross of last year's "Jurassic World". Globally, "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" has grossed nearly 1.9 billion dollars.

Rounding out the 10 most-popular films in the United States and Canada were "13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers" (16 million dollars), "Daddy's Home" (9.3 million), "Norm Of The North" (6.7 million), "The Forest" (5.8 million), "The Big Short" (5.2 million), "Sisters" (4.4 million) and "The Hateful Eight" (3.4 million).