Los Angeles - AFP
Tim Burton's new fantasy "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" bested fellow debut "Deepwater Horizon" at the North American box office over the weekend, industry estimates showed on Sunday.
Burton's latest movie, from 20th Century Fox and Chernin Entertainment, adapted from Ransom Riggs's best-selling novel, tells the story of a young boy (Asa Butterfield) who meets Miss Peregrine (Eva Green) and children with magical powers at her orphanage on an island in Wales.
It earned an estimated $28.5 million, beating out Mark Wahlberg's newest vehicle "Deepwater Horizon," from Lionsgate, which follows BP's notorious 2010 oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, according to industry tracker Exhibitor Relations.
Kurt Russell, Kate Hudson and Gina Rodriguez also star in the action movie directed by Peter Berg. It premiered last month at the Toronto International Film Festival, and raked in $20.6 million in North America over the weekend.
Sony and MGM's "The Magnificent Seven," a remake of the classic 1960 Western starring Denzel Washington, came third during its second week in theaters with $15.7 million.
Fourth place with $13.8 million went to "Storks," an animated film from Warner Bros also in its second week. It is about baby-delivering birds that now handle retail packages and find themselves ruffled when they actually have to find the home of an infant girl.
Fifth-placed "Sully" -- another Warner Bros film, based on the real-life story of a pilot who landed his disabled jetliner on New York's Hudson River -- took in $8.4 million, for a total of $105.4 million in the four weeks since its release.
Rounding out the top 10 films were:
"Masterminds" ($6.6 million)
"The Queen of Katwe" ($2.6 million)
"Don't Breathe" ($2.4 million)
"Bridget Jones's Baby" (2.3 million)
"Snowden" (2 million)