(Reuters) - "Guardians of the Galaxy," Walt Disney Co's offbeat space adventure featuring extraterrestrial misfits and a talking raccoon, took $94 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales this weekend, setting a record for a film opening in August.
"Guardians," which stars some of the lesser-known characters in Disney's Marvel comic book universe, outdid last weekend's leader, the science fiction thriller "Lucy" that collected another $18.3 million in sales at domestic theaters, according to estimates from Rentrak on Sunday.
"Lucy" stars Scarlett Johansson as a woman with a super-powered brain.
"Get On Up," a biography of the soul singer James Brown, finished third with $14 million during its first weekend in theaters. Chadwick Boseman, who played Jackie Robinson last year in "42," portrays Brown.
"Guardians" stars an ensemble cast that features Chris Pratt and Zoe Saldana as intergalactic warriors, plus the voices of Vin Diesel as a humanoid tree and Bradley Cooper as a machine gun-firing raccoon.
The quirky take on an action space adventure won rave reviews from critics and earned social media buzz.
"Lucy" and "Get On Up" were released by Universal Pictures, a unit of Comcast Corp.
(Reporting By Ronald Grover and Andrea Burzynski; Editing by Lynne O'Donnell)