‘Twilight’ clings to top N. America box office slot

This film image released by Summit Entertainment shows Kristen Stewart, left, and Robert Pattinson in a scene from “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2.” AP/Summit Entertainment, Andrew Cooper

LOS ANGELES – The final “Twilight” vampire movie held on for a third week to the top spot at the North America box office, narrowly holding off the latest James Bond effort, preliminary estimates said Sunday.

“The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2,” the fifth and final installment of the wildly popular series, took $17.4 million, said industry tracker Exhibitor Relations, pushing the film’s three-week total past $250 million.

The previous four films, based on novels by Stephenie Meyer and starting in 2008, earned a colossal $2.4 billion.

In second spot was the Bond movie “Skyfall,” which earned $17 million on its fourth weekend — it has grossed more than $246 million since its US opening.

Tied for third place were Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” starring Daniel Day-Lewis, and “Rise of the Guardians,” DreamWorks’s latest animated offering, featuring Jack Frost. Each earned $13.5 million in box office receipts.

Day-Lewis has been tipped as a likely Oscar nominee for his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln in the critically-acclaimed biopic of the assassinated 16th president of the United States.

Holding on to fifth place, 3D fantasy “Life of Pi” by Oscar-winning Taiwanese-American director Ang Lee, based on a Booker prize-winning novel about an Indian boy adrift on a lifeboat in the Pacific, took in $12 million.

Also tied, for sixth place, “Wreck-It Ralph,” the animated Disney film about a video game villain aspiring to be a hero, and new entry “Killing Them Softly,” directed by and starring Brad Pitt as a mob enforcer. Each took in $7 million.

In eighth place was “Red Dawn,” an updated take on a 1984 movie, about a group of teenagers who look to save their town from an invasion of North Korean soldiers. It took in $6.6 million.

And at number nine was “Flight,” starring Denzel Washington, who is also drawing Oscar buzz for his role as a crash-landing hero pilot with drink and drug problems. It pulled in $4.5 million.

Rounding out the top 10 was horror flick “The Collection,” about a man who escapes the vicious grip of a serial killer and is blackmailed to rescue a girl from the killer’s clutches, which debuted with $3.4 million in ticket sales.