LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK ¨C ¡°Lucy,¡± starring Scarlett Johansson as a woman with a super-powered brain, collected $44 million to win at domestic box offices, outmuscling ¡°Hercules,¡± but both releases helped pump life into a lackluster summer at U.S. and Canadian theaters.
¡°Hercules¡± starring Dwayne ¡°The Rock¡± Johnson in the title role, took in $29 million for second place, while ¡°Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,¡± which topped the box office the past two weekends, finished third with $16.4 million.
¡°Lucy,¡± directed by French action film specialist Luc Besson, stars Johansson as a traffic-stopping, object-moving woman whose brain operates at abnormally high levels after a drug is planted in her body. The special effects-laden film was made for a relatively inexpensive $40 million, according to the movie site Box Office Mojo.
Made for a brawny $100 million, ¡°Hercules¡± got mixed reviews from both critics and moviegoers, according to the site Rotten Tomatoes, with 50 of 80 reviewers giving it a ¡°fresh¡± rating and 68 percent of those who saw it saying they liked it.
Both films exceeded opening weekend industry expectations.
¡°Lucy¡± was released by Universal, a unit of Comcast. Viacom¡¯s Paramount Pictures studio and MGM jointly released ¡°Hercules.¡± Fox, a unit of Twenty-First Century Fox, released ¡°Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.¡±
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