‘Ratatouille’ claws way to head of pack

It wasn’t the home run launch of Pixar’s biggest successes, but “Ratatouille” left Walt Disney Co.’s Pixar Animation Studios with an enviable Hollywood streak: eight movies, eight hits.

The G-rated tale of a young rat who dreams of becoming one of France’s finest chefs took in $47.2 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales to easily rank No. 1 for the weekend, according to Sunday’s studio estimates.

The 20th Century Fox thriller “Live Free or Die Hard,” starring Bruce Willis, placed second with an estimated $33.2 million. Michael Moore’s “Sicko” had a healthy second week, cracking the top 10 despite a limited theater count.

“Ratatouille,” directed by Brad Bird (who also wrote the screenplay), had the lowest Pixar opening since “A Bug’s Life” in 1998. But Disney said its stellar reviews and summer play time set it up for a strong run.

“We look at this as a 10-day opening weekend,” said Chuck Viane, Disney’s distribution president. “This is a film for anybody from 6 to 96, and in a couple of days everyone is going to be sitting around picnic tables talking about ‘Ratatouille.’ ”

The film has 95% positive ratings on review aggregation websites RottenTomatoes.com and MetaCritic.com.

Still, some box-office analysts call it a tough sell with kids because of its rodent hero and the relatively exotic subject of French cooking.

Pixar’s previous film, last summer’s “Cars,” opened at $60.1 million domestically and Bird’s previous feature, 2004’s “The Incredibles,” launched at more than $70 million.

Fox expects “Live Free or Die Hard,” which opened Wednesday and grossed an estimated $48.2 million in its first five days, to also hold up well.

The stunt-heavy thriller has garnered surprisingly positive reviews, and attendee exit survey results were “the best we’ve seen since ‘Speed,’ ” said Bert Livingston, senior vice president of distribution at Fox.

It had the highest opening in the four-film “Die Hard” series -- although 12 years have passed since the last one, “Die Hard With a Vengeance.”

Many viewers weren’t born when Willis first appeared as hard-charging cop John McClane in 1988.

Fox aimed the film at a younger audience, earning a PG-13 rating instead of the usual R and teaming Willis with co-star Justin Long, who plays the cool guy in the Apple computer commercials.

“Sicko,” which launched last weekend at one New York theater, expanded to 441 venues and placed ninth with a gross of $4.5 million for Weinstein Co. and distributor Lions Gate.

Weinstein co-founder Harvey Weinstein said he was inspired by the success that Al Gore and Paramount Pictures had with last year’s rollout of the global warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” which played through the summer on word of mouth and proved to be politically persuasive.

“We could have blown this movie out and opened to $30 million, but then we’d be out of the theaters in six weeks,” Weinstein said. “We believe the audience is going to become galvanized by the issue when they see the movie and start to look at the loopholes in their own health coverage.”

Weinstein plans to add 200 more venues Tuesday and expand further in the weeks ahead.

Moore’s previous documentary, 2004’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” was marketed more aggressively and opened at $23.9 million at 868 theaters.

But Weinstein said that film, with its Iraq war theme, played strongly to younger males, who tend to see movies early on, whereas “Sicko” for now is attracting mostly older audiences.

Overseas, distributor Paramount Pictures reported solid results for two of its key summer movies.

“Shrek the Third,” by DreamWorks Animation, grossed $70 million outside the U.S. and Canada -- its best weekend yet -- and the sequel has hauled in $573 million worldwide. “Transformers” grossed $34.7 million in 10 territories, including South Korea, Australia and Italy, where it opened a week ahead of tonight’s U.S. launch.

World peace: When Disney reported a record global opening for “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” Sony Pictures complained of “irregularities” in the mouse house’s number crunching. But over the weekend “Pirates” eclipsed Sony’s “Spider-Man 3” to become the top worldwide hit of 2007, with a gross of $905 million -- and the Culver City studio took pains to congratulate its Burbank rival.

“They deserve all the credit in the world,” said Jeff Blake, Sony’s president of worldwide marketing and distribution.

josh.friedman@latimes.com