LOS ANGELES, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1" has done a good job in keeping its lead, which it has achieved three weekends ago, through another Friday-through- Sunday period, at a time when the North America box office is remembered as one of the slowest one in recent memory.
The fourth installment in the hot vampire and were wolves franchise produced by Summit Entertainment is projected to sell 16. 9 million U.S. dollars worth of tickets in the United States and Canada. The receipt represented a 59 percent slump from last weekend, but it's still good enough for the tent pole to remain No. 1 in the box office derby in the post-Thanksgiving period.
Overall, the latest film about a vampire love story has grossed a three-week running total of 247.3 million dollars, according to the studio.
Partly as no new wide releases this weekend, the North America market is projected to garner between 78 million to 82 million dollars in sales, representing the lowest weekend of the year.
Up till now, the year's receipt has tallied at 93.9 billion dollars, or a 3.2-percent decrease from last year, according to Boxoffice.com.
As one of the major Thanksgiving holdovers, "The Muppets," a reboot of a 1970s popular television show starring Jim Henson's popular felt puppets, also showed its strong staying power, taking in 11.2 million dollars in ticket sales, enough for it for expand its No. 2 place for the second weekend. It is projected to gross 56.1 million dollars over two weeks of exhibition.
"Hugo," Martin Scorsese's first family movie shot in 3-D format, is on track to sell 7.6 million dollars in ticket stubs, finished in No. 3 place. The family friendly flick, in its first week of wide play when it added another 500 locations, will gross 25.2 million dollars in sales from 1,840 venues since it opened in limited distribution last week.
The film was named best movie of the year by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures -- a New York-based critics group on Thursday. Scorsese was also picked by the critics as the year's best director.
The Paramount release was adapted from Brian Selznick's novel " The Invention of Hugo Cabret" which deals with a boy who lives alone in a Paris train station in the 1930s.
Rounding out the 10 most-popular movies in the United States and Canada are "Arthur Christmas" (7.4 million dollars), "Happy Feet Two" (6 million dollars), "Jack And Jill" (5.5 million dollars), "The Descendants" (5.2 million dollars), "Immortals" (4. 4 million dollars), "Tower Heist" (4.1 million dollars), and "Puss In Boots" (3 million dollars).
