'Lucy' pummels 'Hercules' to win U.S. weekend box office race | Reuters

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LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK (Reuters) - "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".

(Reporting by Ronald Grover and Chris Michaud; Editing by Stephen Powell)