Director Ron Howard's 125-million-dollar thriller, "The Da Vinci Code," starring Tom Hanks, scored 224 million dollars worldwide and topped the North American box office in its weekend debut, its distributor said on Sunday.

The film, highly anticipated by fans of Dan Brown's bestselling novel and vigorously criticized by religious groups, raked in 77 million dollars in North America, according to box office tracker Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc.

It was the fourth biggest worldwide opening. Only "Star Wars: Episode III," "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King," and "War of the Worlds" did better.

The Sony Pictures film is already the greatest commercial success for Howard and Hanks. Hanks' previous biggest opening weekend was for "Toy Story 2," which made 57.4 million dollars in its 1999 opening.

The film received mixed reviews and protesters, but the controversy did little to deter moviegoers. Experts had predicted that filmgoers would ignore the bad reviews and protests.

In second place in the weekly rankings was "Over The Hedge" with ticket sales of 37.3 million dollars.

Displaced from the top spot, "Mission: Impossible III" fell to third place with ticket receipts of 11 million dollars, followed in fourth spot by "Poseidon," a remake of the 1972 shipwreck movie "The Poseidon Adventure," with sales of 9.2 million dollarrs.

In fifth place was the family comedy "RV" with 5.1 million, followed in sixth place by "See No Evil" with 4.4 million.

Editor: Donald