Science fiction thriller " Gravity" held up well in North America and extended its No. 1 placing into the second weekend of business over the weekend.

The Warner Bros. science fiction and space drama film starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney is estimated to take in 44.3 million US dollars in ticket sales in the weekend, down 21 percent from the debuting weekend that started Oct. 4. It is on track to gross 123.4 million dollars in ten days after sailing past the 100-million-dollar mark Saturday.

Sony/Columbia Pictures' real-life sea pirates saga "Captain Phillips" outpaced pre-release estimates to finish at the No. 2 slot with a 26-million-dollar weekend. The film, directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Tom Hanks, was screened at 3,020 theaters in the United States and Canada, but skewed slightly towards male moviegoers (52 percent). Sixty-two percent of the first-night audiences were 35 years or older.

Mainly helped by Hanks' drawing power, the PG-13 rated docudrama started to build a strong word of mouth. It earned a rare "A" CinemaScore from first-night moviegoers, and a 94 percent favorable critic response from film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

The movie was adapted from "A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, And Dangerous Days at Sea," a 2010 book penned by the real-life captain Richard Phillips. He was held hostage by Somali pirates after his ship was hijacked in April 2009.

Sony Pictures' animated film "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2" was ranked the third with an estimated weekend tickets earning of 14.2 million US dollars.

Rounding out the 10 most popular films in North America this weekend, as estimated by studios, were "Machete Kills" (debuting at 3.8 million US dollars), "Runner Runner" (3.7 million), " Prisoners" (3.7 million), "Insidious Chapter 2" (2.7 million), " Rush" (2.4 million), "Don Jon" (2.3 million), and "Baggage Claim" (2.1 million).