Hobbit sequel tops No.1 at North American box office

Warner's "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" tops the weekend north American box office in its second week. This week's debut "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues" follows it to the second place.

The fire-breathing dragon of "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" has left great impression to the moviegoers, and helped the sequel seize the top place of box office for the second time with estimated 31.5 million U.S. dollars, which represented a 57 percent decline from last weekend's opening weekend performance.

With a solid ten-day start of 127.5 million dollars, "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" was 15 percent behind the 150 million dollars ten-day took of the first "Hobbit", "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" last year.

IMAX locations were responsible for 4 million dollars, about 12. 9 percent, of this weekend's overall gross for the sequel. The film has grossed 16.1 million U.S. dollars in IMAX to date, which represents 12.6 percent of its total domestic gross thus far. " Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues" debuted in second place with an estimated 26.8 million dollars.

Since opening on Wednesday at roughly 3,500 locations, the film has grossed 40 million dollars in five days of release. Paramount Pictures' sequel to 2004's live-action comedy, "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy," which stars Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd, Steve Carell and Christina Applegate, drew an approval rating of 75 percent, according to Rotten Tomatoes and got a so-so "B" rating on CinemaScore.

Disney's animated "Frozen" was third with 19.2 million dollars. This blockbuster 3D computer animated film has done exceptionally well which grossed 191.6 million dollars, in the last 31 days since its release. Rounding out the 10 most popular films in North America this weekend, as estimated by studios, were "American Hustle" (19.1 million dollars), "Saving Mr. Banks" (9.3 million), "Hunger Games: Catching Fire" (8.8 million), "Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas"(8.5 million), "Walking With Dinosaurs" (7.3 million), "Dhoom 3" (3.3 million) and "Thor: The Dark World" (1.3 million).