Seven weeks later, “Jumanji” is No. 1 at box office

NEW YORK - The heir to “Titanic” is ... “Jumanji: Welcome the Jungle.”

For the first time since James Cameron’s disaster epic, a December release has topped the weekend box office in February. Seven weeks after first opening in theaters, Sony Pictures’ “Jumanji” again took the top spot at the North American box office with an estimated $11 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.

On a sluggish Super Bowl weekend, that was good enough to surpass last week’s No. 1 film, “Maze Runner: The Death Cure.” The third installment in the YA trilogy slid 58 percent in its second week with $10.2 million in ticket sales.

It’s the fourth weekend out of seven in which the “Jumanji” reboot, starring Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, has led all films domestically. Met with little initial fanfare, “Jumanji” played second fiddle for its first two weeks of release to “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.”

Because of good word of mouth and relatively little family-film competition, “Jumanji” has become one of Sony’s biggest hits ever, ranking behind only its “Spider-Man” films. It has now grossed $352.6 million in the United States and Canada. The haunted-house horror film “Winchester” led by Helen Mirren was the sole new wide release on the one weekend that Hollywood typically cedes to football. The poorly reviewed Lionsgate release opened with $9.3 million.

Total ticket sales were $92 million, according to comScore, a sum that falls behind recent Super Bowl weekends - always among the quietest movie weekends of the year - but above the lowest grossing ever.

For the first time, Fox Searchlight had films playing in 4,000 or more theaters, thanks to its Oscar favorites “The Shape of Water” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” boosted its theater count from 1,854 to 2,341. AP