Audiences swarmed theatres for tropical bird comedy Rio, which nestled into its perch at the top of the box office for a second week, industry data showed on Sunday.
The 3D cartoon about pet macaw Blu voiced by Social Network star Jesse Eisenberg, which bolts from chilly climes to the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, made $26.8 million in the Friday-to-Sunday period, according to box office tracker Exhibitor Relations.
After last week scoring the best debut weekend of the year, the film has made just over $81 million since its opening.
In second spot was the latest comedic offering from Tyler Perry, with the critically-panned Madea’s Big Happy Family that made $25.7 million in its opening weekend.
In third place, starring British heart-throb Robert Pattinson and Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon, was the Depression-era romance Water for Elephants, taking in $17.5 million also on its debut.
Easter romp Hop, the real-action-animation hybrid about the wayward son of the Easter Bunny and which had spent two weeks at the top, earned another $12.4 million on the Easter weekend for a domestic total of just over $100 million.
Scream 4, the latest in director Wes Craven’s irony-drenched horror-comedy franchise, slipped three spots to fifth in its second week with $7.1 million. In sixth, also on its debut, was Disney nature flick African Cats, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, which documents the lives of a number of big cats on the African savannah, making $6.4 million in box office receipts.
The weekend estimates showed Soul Surfer, in the seventh spot with $5.9 million, telling the true story of church-going teen surfer AnnaSophia Robb who returns to the ocean after losing an arm in a shark attack.
Horror flick Insidious, in which a family finds itself living in a haunted house, picked up $5.3 million for the eighth spot, while Hanna, a thriller about a teenage assassin raised in the wilds of North Finland, earned $5.2 million for the ninth spot.
Rounding out the top 10 was Jake Gyllenhaal’s acclaimed sci-fi thriller Source Code, about a government experiment to find the bomber of a commuter train, which took $5.06 million.