hannibal

North American moviegoers were hungry for Hannibal the Cannibal at the weekend. "Hannibal," a thriller starring Sir Anthony Hopkins in a long-awaited follow-up to the 1991 hit "The Silence of the Lambs," grossed a record-breaking $58 million in its first three days of release in the United States and Canada, according to studio estimates issued on Sunday. If the numbers hold when final data are issued on Monday, "Hannibal" will replace 2000's "Mission: Impossible II" ($57.9 million) as …

…highest-grossing foreign-language film in North America. Columbia and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp. Rounding out the top five was Tom Hanks' "Cast Away" with $5.0 million. The survival saga's total stands at $209.7 million. It was released by Twentieth Century Fox, a unit of Fox Entertainment Group Inc. The top 12 films grossed about $107.6 million, up 49 percent from last weekend, and up 43 percent from the year-ago period, when "Scream 3" enjoyed its second weekend at No. 1.