'Dune' loses spice but stays atop N.America box office

Sci-fi thriller "Dune" saw its ticket sales drop in its second weekend out but still held its lead in the North American box office, with an estimated take of $15.5 million, industry watcher Exhibitor Relations reported Sunday.

The Warner Bros. version of the classic Frank Herbert opus lost 62 percent from its debut weekend, a sizable drop but less so than suffered by other recent big releases, as many fans opted to take in the visually spectacular Denis Villeneuve film on big Imax screens.

Starring Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya and Oscar Isaac, "Dune" follows a family in the distant future fighting for survival on a desert planet plagued by monstrous sandworms but also a valuable resource called spice. Globally, the film is nearing $300 million in ticket sales.

The Halloween weekend is typically slow for moviegoing, as people opt for costume parties and trick-or-treating, but Universal's well-timed horror flic "Halloween Kills" retained second place, taking in $8.5 million for the Friday-through-Sunday period.

The follow-on to 2018's "Halloween," it again stars Jamie Lee Curtis as the avenging Laurie Strode.

Sticking in third was United Artists' James Bond installment "No Time to Die," at $7.8 million. Daniel Craig stars as suave spy 007 -- for the last time, the studio says.

In what analysts deemed the weekend's biggest surprise, fourth place went to a Japanese anime movie with a head-scratching title: "My Hero Academia: World Heroes Mission," at $6.4 million. The Funimation film is a sequel to "My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising."

And in fifth was Sony's superhero movie "Venom: Let There Be Carnage," at $5.8 million. Tom Hardy plays a journalist whose symbiotic link to an alien gives him superpowers.