'Alice' stays on top in box office earnings

Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" retained the box office lead for the third week running, pulling in 34.5 million dollars for the weekend, industry figures showed Sunday.

Starring Johnny Depp and Mia Wasikowska, the live-action, 3-D version of Lewis Carroll's children's classic, has earned 265.7 million dollars since its release, box office tracker Exhibitor Relations reported.

The surprise of the weekend was "Diary of a Wimpy Kid," 20th Century Fox's newly released live action adaptation of the Jeff Kinney cartoon novels, which came in second in the box office with 21.8 million dollars.

That put it ahead of "Bounty Hunter," a comedy starring Jennifer Anniston and Gerard Butler, and the science fiction morality tale "Repo Men," which came in third and fourth at 21 million and 6.1 million dollars respectively in their first week in theaters.

"She's Out of My League," in which a stunning woman and a dorky guy fall in love, slipped to fifth place from third last week, earning six million.

"Green Zone," an Iraq war film, took in 5.9 million dollars, dropping to sixth place from second.

Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island" was in seventh place in its fifth week in theaters. It made 4.7 million dollars.

"Avatar," the top grossing movie of all time, added another four million dollars to the pile, bringing its North American boxoffice total to 736.9 million dollars. On its 14th week in theaters, it was the eighth top earner.

Behind it in ninth place was the interracial romantic comedy "Our Family Wedding," which earned 3.8 million dollars, and in tenth romantic drama "Remember Me" at 1.5 million.