Disney's "Zootopia" tops North American box office with 73.7 mln dollars

Walt Disney Animation Studios witnesses a wonderful start of its 3D animated film "Zootopia" this weekend.

"Zootopia" opened with an estimated 73.7 million U.S. dollars in North American ticket sales this weekend from 3,827 theaters. That's better than the previous best-selling feature cartoon from Disney, 2013's "Frozen" and its 67.4 million dollars opening weekend, according to the movie box office watcher website comScore.

Compared to the most recent film from Walt Disney Animation Studios, "Zootopia" opened an impressive 31 percent ahead of the 56.2 million dollars start of 2014's "Big Hero 6".

The audience for "Zootopia" skewed towards female moviegoers which is up to 53 percent and towards moviegoers 25 years and younger which is up to 54 percent. Family audiences represented 73 percent of the film's overall audience.

"Zootopia" received an "A" rating from opening day audiences on CinemaScore and currently maintains a 98 percent positive score from critics on RottenTomatoes.

The R-rated action movie "London Has Fallen" was in second place for the Friday-through Sunday period, with a 21.7 million dollars ticket sales sum.

And the R-rated thriller "Deadpool" had another good weekend, with 16.4 million dollars on its third weekend of exhibition. The film has grossed 311.2 million dollars over 24 days of showings.

Paramount's "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" debuted in fourth place with an estimated 7.6 million dollars. The R-rated comedy starring Tina Fey opened below expectations and registered one of the lower debuts of a wide release staring Fey to date.

Rounding out the rest top 10 movies this weekend at theaters in the United States and Canada were "Gods Of Egypt" (5 million dollars), "Risen" (3.9 million), "Kung Fu Panda 3" (3.5 million), "The Revenant" (3.3 million), "Eddie The Eagle" (3.1 million) and "The Witch" (2.5 million). Endit