NEW YORK, USA (AP) — In its second weekend at the box office, the Disney animated tale Frozen finally cooled off

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, while the week’s lone new wide release Out of the Furnace wasn’t a match for either blockbuster.

According to studio estimates Sunday, Frozen led the multiplexes with a haul of US$31.6 million over the weekend, taking over the top spot from Catching Fire. Lionsgate’s Hunger Games sequel had topped the box office for the last two weeks, but slid to second with US$27 million in its third week of release.

Relativity Media’s steel-town drama Out of the Furnace, starring Christian Bale and Casey Affleck, posed no challenge for the bigger blockbuster holdovers. It opened with US$5.3 million, good enough for third place on what’s typically a quiet early December weekend, sandwiched between Thanksgiving and the coming holiday season releases.

But it was an excellent weekend for Hollywood, with total box office up 16.9 percent over the same weekend last year. Opening in a limited release of four theatres, the Coen brothers’ folk tale Inside Llewyn Davis also had one of the year’s highest per-theatre averages of US$100,500 for CBS Films.

With only a handful of moviegoing weeks left in the year, the strong weekend boosts the year’s chances of exceeding 2012’s record box office. This year may surpass last year’s $10.8 billion domestic box office, said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for box-office tracker Rentrak.