A grown-up "Hansel & Gretel" grabbed the weekend box office title, pulling in $19 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales with its reinvention of the classic fairy tale characters as fierce bounty hunters.

"Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters" knocked last weekend's winner, low-budget horror flick "Mama," into second place. "Mama" earned $12.8 million from Friday through Sunday, according to studio estimates, followed by "Silver Linings Playbook" with $10 million.

CIA drama "Zero Dark Thirty" came in fourth with $9.8 million.

Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton star in "Hansel & Gretel" as crossbow-wielding adult siblings who travel the world to take out evil witches. MGM and Viacom Inc's Paramount Pictures produced the action comedy for about $50 million. Paramount had predicted opening weekend sales in the high-teens or low $20 million range.

Don Harris, Paramount's president of distribution, said the film performed well despite the very cold temperatures and snow that hit the eastern United States.

"We are pleased that we were on our number on a worldwide basis. It looks like we are on or exceeding our numbers, but we did get dinged with the weather on Friday," he said in an interview.

"The impact of the weather was certainly more than I had predicted."

"Mama" features Jessica Chastain as a woman forced to take care of two orphaned nieces who have been living in the woods. The $15 million production has now earned $48.6 million at U.S. and Canadian theaters through two weekends.

Chastain also stars in "Zero Dark Thirty" in an Oscar-nominated role as a dogged CIA agent searching for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The best picture nominee, which has sparked debate over depictions of torture, has grossed $69.9 million since its release in late December.

"Silver Linings Playbook," another Oscar contender, stars Bradley Cooper as a former mental patient trying to rebuild his life with the help of a young widow played by Jennifer Lawrence. Total sales for "Silver Linings" reached $69.46 million.

New crime thriller "Parker" finished in fifth place, taking in $7 million at domestic theaters. The film is based on a series of novels by Donald E. Westlake and stars Jason Statham as a thief seeking revenge against a crew that double-crossed him. Jennifer Lopez plays a woman who helps with his mission.

"Movie 43," a raunchy new comedy with an ensemble of Hollywood directors and stars, settled for seventh place. The film is a series of related short films about three kids scouring the Internet to find the world's most-banned movie. Stars making appearances include Huge Jackman, Seth MacFarlane, Kate Winslet and Dennis Quaid. Privately held Relativity Media produced the film for about $6 million.

"Mama" was distributed by Universal Studios, a division of Comcast Corp. Sony Corp's movie studio released "Zero Dark Thirty." "Parker" was released by independent studio FilmDistrict. The Weinstein Co distributed "Silver Linings Playbook."

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Paramount Pictures, MGM

Gemma Arterton and Jeremy Renner in "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters."

REVIEW: Grimm’s fairy tales have captivated TV viewers lately, and an equally large audience will probably lap up the campy 3-D extravaganza, "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters,"  when it opens in theaters this weekend. The picture was shot two years ago, but Paramount may have found the right moment to release the picture, in the dog days of January, when competition is thin. Young fanboys will sneak into the movie despite the R rating, but there isn’t much here to entice anyone with a bit of maturity. Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner seems out of place in this tacky pastiche, but hopefully the fat paycheck he received will allow him to return to artier fare very soon.

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When you see the names of Will Ferrell and Adam McKay among the film’s producers, you know that the picture was never intended to be taken seriously. Lots of anachronisms and tongue-in-cheek dialogue establish the spoofy nature of this violent venture. All that’s missing is a genuine sense of wit.

The film begins by referring to the original fairy tale, when a young Hansel and Gretel are abandoned in the forest and venture into a witch’s cottage built of delicious candy. (There’s a good later joke when the adult Hansel takes a medieval version of an insulin injection to help him counteract that sugar addiction.) Then the movie jumps forward a couple of decades to find the grown-up Hansel and Gretel turning their childhood trauma into a vocation. The time period is a bit indistinct. Some of the production details evoke the Middle Ages, yet our heroes have an arsenal of somewhat more modern weaponry to help them annihilate witches and warlocks.

As they stalk their prey, brother and sister find allies -- a “white witch” for Hansel and a troll who takes a fancy to Gretel -- but basically they have to rely on their own grit to triumph over their enemies. Their chief antagonist is a cunning vixen who morphs from glamorous to hideous when the mood strikes. This must be the year for screen beauties to indulge their ugly side. Famke Janssen follows Julia Roberts and Charlize Theron in releasing her hidden monster.

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Despite its few wry jokes, the script is awfully thin. Norwegian writer-director Tommy Wirkola ("Dead Snow") loves to film crushed and exploding heads, but the film is too fanciful to be truly revolting. Wirkola makes the most of the 3-D technology; there haven’t been as many deadly weapons flying at the audience since the era of "It Came From Outer Space."

Unfortunately, the director doesn’t bring much out of the actors. Renner and British actress Gemma Arterton are certainly game, but this foolish vehicle doesn’t give them a chance to show what they do best. With a running time of under 90 minutes, the film is smart enough not to wear out its welcome. But that’s the only sign of true intelligence in this juvenile caper.

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Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross in "The Bourne Legacy."

REVIEW: The "Bourne" legacy is furthered but not burnished by this fourth installment of the highly successful series that has heretofore been fronted by Matt Damon. With Jeremy Renner stepping in to play another covert operative and franchise screenwriter Tony Gilroy taking over the directorial reins from Paul Greengrass, the same tone and look are maintained, but the visceral excitement is muffled by familiarity, an insufficiently conceived lead character and the sheer weight of backstory and multiple layers of deception.

The box-office muscle of this final major name-brand attraction of the summer will be considerable but likely nowhere near the level of the most recent entry, 2007's "The Bourne Ultimatum," which contributed $422 million of the $944 million the now decade-old Bourne series has generated in worldwide revenue.

Gilroy, who wrote this one with his brother Dan, knows his way around the inner workings of the series and the subterranean levels of secrecy and treachery that have made the late Robert Ludlum’s creation thrive onscreen for the past decade (this film bears no resemblance to the identically named 2004 novel authored by Eric Van Lustbader, who has written six more in the series).

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Having proved his directorial acumen with "Michael Clayton" and "Duplicity," Gilroy starts things off promisingly with a rugged prologue that introduces a new off-the-grid Operation Outcome field agent, Aaron Cross (Renner), completing a rigorous solo training mission in Alaska. Cross can climb, jump, shoot and anticipate as well as Bourne ever could and can manage at least two things his predecessor never did: defeat a wolf in hand-to-hand and take down a drone that his superior, CIA manager Eric Byer (Edward Norton), targets him with after learning that the entire program has been “infected” by the arrival in New York of Jason Bourne.

The first section of "The Bourne Legacy" thus overlaps with the climax of the last film, some footage of which is intercut with Cross’ remarkable survival of the drone attack and resourceful cover-up that makes Byer think the agent has died.

Thereby able to move around for a while without being tracked, Cross nonetheless needs critical meds only the government can provide, which links his fate to a genetic scientist, Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz), who works with a few others in developing some extremely illicit drugs until a supposed deranged lunatic among them guns down all his co-workers except for Shearing, who manages to hide. But we should know by now that there’s a nasty ulterior motive behind almost every act of violence in a "Bourne" film, and it is no different this time.

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Cross too conveniently jumps into the good doctor’s life just as she’s engaged in a tense interview about the murders with superiors at her home, upon which they dash off as paired fugitives in the Hitchcock tradition, with the twist that the panicky government pursuers only think there’s of one of them.

Gilroy has worked out the intricacies of the plot mechanics with a density that is thick as it is clever, all of it once again designed to underline the utter mercilessness and amorality of the CIA and such fictional secret organizations as Treadstone and Operation Outcome; as the forever-agitated Byer states it, “We are morally indefensible and absolutely necessary.” This cynicism always has been at the cold heart of the series, and the appeal was that Damon’s Bourne was always a match for it.

At first, in scenes in an Alaska cabin with a supposed contact (Oscar Isaac) that are laced with wariness, it seems that Gilroy and Renner mean to make Aaron Cross into a naturally chatty, inquisitive type, in contrast to Bourne’s taciturn seriousness. This intention shows itself for a while longer once he gets to the East Coast, but then it vanishes, leaving Renner with little to play other than a cookie-cutter tough guy and action hero able to save the day many times over.

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In his reputation-making roles in "The Hurt Locker" and "The Town," Renner displayed a volatile unpredictability that bore comparison to James Cagney. Since then, with his far more manicured and better-tailored appearances in "Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol," "The Avengers" and now this, he has seemed straitjacketed and tamped down, as if having been advised not to come off as dangerous so as to be made fit for general consumption.

Cross, like Bourne, should be dangerous, and it’s not as if the character doesn’t get to take down a bunch of spooks and assassins anxious for a major notch in their belts. But Gilroy has cheated his leading man out of a good part by providing scant backstory, personality traits or motivation other than the most simplistic one of saving his own skin and that of his companion in rebellion against superiors who feel they need them erased.

For her part, Weisz has a few good scenes to play, especially upon surviving the lab massacre and when facing down her inquisitors. The bad guys, from Norton on down, are terse, self-serving and ruthless “just do it” types.

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At least as much as its predecessors, this is a globe-trotting affair, running from Alaska through Chicago, New York, D.C. and environs, Seoul, Karachi and, ultimately, Manila, a relatively unfamiliar location in big features that is the scene for a long motorcycle chase that, unfortunately, features mostly familiar moves. With Gilroy’s regular cinematographer Robert Elswit behind the camera, the film looks first-rate, but the director backs down several notches from the radically amped-up approach to physicality established by Greengrass, to diminished returns.

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Jeremy Renner is a new superagent in "The Bourne Legacy."

Break open the champagne bottles and put on your bulletproof vests: the "Bourne" films are back.

And with the release of the first trailer for the fourth installment in the series, "The Bourne Legacy," it looks like we're set for even more stylish cinematography, jittery camera angles and lots of fist-punching good times from our favorite agent-who-forgot-he-was-an-agent.

Oh, wait: Matt Damon isn't in this one. This time, it's "Hurt Locker's" Jeremy Renner taking over the hard-hitting duties as a new character, and while it doesn't show him transforming into a brainwashed dead-eyed killer as clearly as Damon did in the first three installments (the last one, "The Bourne Ultimatum," came out in 2007), he effectively sells his superagent role.

Renner is Aaron Cross -- though he gives a different name at the start of the trailer -- and we're given short close-ups that hint at the menace to come, including new-to-the-series Ed Norton getting Renner to confirm that there's nothing he wouldn't do for his country, and Albert Finney appearing to take on the doughy-faced master-architect role Brian Cox memorably vacated in "The Bourne Supremacy."

But there are some returning names and faces. Agent-training project Treadstone gets a name-drop and Joan Allen (as the sympathetic Pamela Landy) gets a quick mention, so even fans upset that Damon hung up his laser sight should feel right at home. 

"He's Treadstone without the inconsistencies," says one character referring to Renner -- which seems to indicate that yet again, this government organization thinks they can control their own human weapons. As we've learned before, that's usually a mistake.

Sounds promising -- and look, they didn't call it "Bourne Again," so that's a huge plus.

"Bourne Legacy" is slated to premiere in theaters on Aug. 3.

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