Zombie love story 'Warm Bodies' heats up Super Bowl weekend

LOS ANGELES: "Warm Bodies," a romantic comedy featuring a warm-hearted zombie, lured teenage girls to the theater, collecting $20 million in ticket sales in the US and Canada to take the box office title on a weekend dominated by Super Bowl parties and football watching.

Playing in more than 3,000 theaters, the odd pairing of a pale-faced zombie with his breathing girlfriend faced little competition among new films and easily mauled last weekend's winner "Hansel and Gretel," an updated version of the classic fairy tale with witch-hunting siblings that collected $9.2 million this weekend, according to studio estimates.

The weekend's other widely released newcomer "Bullet to the Head," starring 66-year-old Sylvester Stallone as a tatooed hit-man, collected $4.5 million for sixth place.

Two weeks earlier, another aging action star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, had a feeble opening in his own shoot-em-up, "The Last Stand."

Benefiting from the buzz following Oscar nominations for each of its four stars, "Silver Linings Playbook" was third with $8.1 million as it continued to open in more theaters. The film is now showing at more than 2,600 locations, according to the movie site Hollywood.com.