awake movie

Universal's crime sage starring two Oscar-winners easily grabbed the top spot of box office in North America this weekend, and joined hands with a Bee Movie to help awake Hollywood's sleepy fall season, preliminary figures released Sunday showed.

Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe's American Gangster debuted with some 46 million dollars over the three-day period, followed by DreamWorks Animation's Bee Movie with 39.1 million dollars in its opening weekend, according to Los Angeles-based box office tracker Media By Numbers.

Bolstered by favorable critic reviews, American Gangster, which is based the true life of 1970s Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas, became the biggest opening ever for the two Hollywood A-list stars.

Crowe's previous best record was Gladiator, which opened in 2000 with 35 million dollars in the first weekend, while Washington's was last year's Inside Man with 29 million dollars.

Bee Season proved popular with family moviegoers, as the animated comedy starring television comedian Jerry Seinfeld as a bee who decides to sue the human race for stealing honey from bees.

The Lionsgate horror film Saw IV remained strong in its second weekend, taking in 11 million dollars to take third place, while Disney romantic comedy Dan in Real Life was in fourth with 8.1 million dollars and Sony's vampire flick 30 Days of Night in fifth with 4 million dollars.

The top-selling 12 films in North America this weekend generated a combined 127 million dollars, a 12 percent increase from that in the same weekend last year. It was the first time that Hollywood saw an increase in box office revenues after six straight "down" weekends in the current fall season.