Los Angeles (Agence France-Presse) - Animated comedy Big Hero 6 proved to have superpowers in the weekend battle for the box office, fighting off sci-fi epic Interstellar to claim top spot, industry figures showed Monday.

Big Hero 6, which features a 14-year-old genius and an inflatable robot called Baymax, opened with a weekend haul of US$56.2 million (S$72.6 million), according to box office tracker Exhibitor Relations.

The performance was enough to beat out Christopher Nolan's sweeping space odyssey, Interstellar, where astronauts travel through a wormhole in search of a new habitable planet. The heavily hyped film came in second with $47.5 million.

Well behind in third place was the David Fincher thriller Gone Girl, starring Ben Affleck. The film, which has earned more than $145 million after six weeks in theatres, pulled in another $6.2 million at the North American box office this weekend.

Horror movie Ouija, down from last week's top spot, took in $5.9 million, for fourth place.

At number five was the Brad Pitt World War II tank drama Fury, with $5.6 million.

St. Vincent, a comedy starring Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy and Naomi Watts, earned $5.4 million for sixth place.

Nightcrawler, which stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a sleazy video journalist, slipped to seventh place, down from the number two slot a week earlier. It pulled in just under $5.4 million.

In eighth place was John Wick, starring Keanu Reeves as an ex-hitman, which scored $4.1 million in ticket sales.

Ninth was Disney's Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day - based on a children's book of the same name and starring Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner. It made $3.5 million.

And rounding out the top 10 was animated comedy The Book of Life, featuring the voices of Zoe Saldana and Channing Tatum, with $2.8 million.