“Noah,” the big screen adaptation of the biblical tale starring Russell Crowe in the lead role, topped the North American Box Office at the weekend, estimates showed Sunday.
The action drama, which reunites Crow with Jennifer Connelly whom he starred alongside in “A Beautiful Mind” in 2001, earned $44 million, easily holding off last week’s top earner “Divergent,” which took second spot with $26.5 million.
“Muppets Most Wanted,” Kermit and Co’s latest outing, was a distant third with $11.4 million in takings. It was ahead of “Mr Peabody and Sherman,” based on characters from the 1960s television cartoon “Rocky and Bullwinkle,” which earned $9.5 million in its third weekend in theaters.
In fifth place ($9.1 million) was the religiously themed “God’s Not Dead,” which tells the story of a college freshman who debates his atheist philosophy professor.
The film was ahead of Wes Anderson’s quirky “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” which earned $8.8 million in sixth spot.
In a quiet week for new releases, the only other debut movie, “Sabotage,” an action flick headed by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sam Worthington, took a disappointing seventh place with $5.3 million in ticket sales.
The rest of the pack included car-chase action movie “Need for Speed,” which fell from sixth to eighth spot earning $4.3 million, followed by ancient Greece fantasy-action movie “300: Rise of an Empire” — the gory prequel to the 2007 hit “300” — which took $4.3 million in sales.