Animated flick 'The Wild Robot' tops North American box office

Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – "The Wild Robot," the animated science fiction tale of a machine surviving on a deserted island, topped North American box offices this weekend, ending the three-week reign of "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice," industry watchers said Sunday.

The DreamWorks Animation film took in $35 million in the Friday-through-Sunday period, industry watcher Exhibitor Relations estimated. Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong'o is the voice of the intelligent robot Roz, who is marooned on an uninhabited island when a typhoon upends a cargo ship.

In order to survive, Roz must befriend a menagerie of woodland animals perplexed by her arrival and become the adoptive mother of an orphaned gosling named Brightbill. "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice" slipped to second place in the rankings after three weeks on top, this time taking in another $16 million, for a four-week total of $250 million in revenue, Exhibitor Relations said.

Michael Keaton again incarnates the creepily hilarious title character, in a cast including "Beetlejuice" veterans Winona Ryder and Catherine O'Hara, plus newcomers Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, and Willem Dafoe. The weekend's biggest loser may have been Francis Ford Coppola's "Megalopolis," which made its box office debut with a weak $4 million.

The film -- a wildly ambitious and divisive epic -- saw Coppola spend $120 million of his own money to make it, selling a stake in his California vineyard. At number three for this week was the animated action film "Transformers One," the latest installment in the franchise based on the 1980s toy line. It posted a take of $9.3 million this weekend.

Fourth place went to the new Telugu-language movie "Devara Part 1" -- an action drama film about two brothers who become enemies, filmed in the regional Indian language -- with a take of $5.6 million. In fifth was "Speak No Evil," a new psychological horror film from Blumhouse and Universal Pictures, which took in $4.3 million.

Rounding out the top 10 were:

"Megalopolis" ($4 million)

"Deadpool and Wolverine" ($2.7 million)

"My Old Ass" ($2.22 million)

"Never Let Me Go" ($2.2 million)

"The Substance" ($1.8 million)