'The Avengers' sinks 'Battleship' to continue dominating box office

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"The Avengers" continued to reign the theaters across North America with more records in its third weekend, reaching 400 million U.S. dollars threshold in 14 days, the fastest in Hollywood history.

The Marvel Studios mega-blockbuster, distributed by Walt Disney Co., grossed another 55 million dollars in its third week, the second best third weekend performance in box office history behind only Avatar's 68.5 million dollars, according to studio estimates released by Hollywood.com on Sunday.

Its 17-day domestic box office reached 457.1 million dollars, putting the super-hero film at No. 6 behind "Shrek 2" on the all- time domestic grossers chart.

Worldwide, the film is approaching the 1.2 billion mark with 723.3 million dollars earned internationally since its debut, surpassing Toy Story 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest to become the biggest Disney release of all time. The film is currently No. 4 film of all time globally, with Avatar, Titanic and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 ahead of it.

"'The Avengers' is dominating the marketplace so profoundly that the newcomers are having a tough time breaking in now," said box office analyst for Hollywood.com Paul Dergerabedian.

Three newcomers include Universal Picture's sci-fi action Battleship, Lionsgate's comedy What to Expect When You're Expecting and Paramount's comedy The Dictator.

The 211-million big budget Battleship, opened No. 2 at the weekend with 25.4 million dollars from 3,690 theaters domestically, far below what industry had expected. It was even worse than the March opening of "John Carter," which has cost Disney a 200- million-dollar loss.

Internationally, "Battleship" has taken in respectable 227 million dollars since opening in April.

The film, directed by Peter Berg and starring Liam Neeson and pop music phenom Rihanna, takes its name from the popular Hasbro board game. But Universal did not manage to sell it as well as Transformers. The film also stars Taylor Kitsch from the box office disaster John Carter.

The Dictator, co-written by and starring Sacha Baron Cohen and directed by Larry Charles, was in the third place with better-than- expected 17.4 million dollars. It earned 4.2 million dollars on Wednesday in its debut. The film has grossed 54.8 million dollars worldwide with 30.3 million dollars coming from international markets.

Warner Bros.'horror vampire comedy Dark Shadows, the eighth collaboration between Johnny Depp and director Tim Burton, slipped to the fourth place with 12.77 million dollars in its second weekend and a 10-day total of 50.9 million dollars domestically, far behind Depp-Burton's blockbusters such as "Alice in Wonderland " and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

Another newcomer What to Expect When You're Expecting was fifth with 10.5 million dollars at North America Box Office. The romantic comedy, staring Jennifer Lopez, Cameron Diaz, Matthew Morrison and others, received a B- from CinemaScore.