Los Angeles, Aug 10 (IANS): Paramount's action film " Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation" beat the newly released "Fantastic Four" this weekend to remain in first place at the North American box office.

"Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation" led the box office with $29.4 million this weekend, according to studio estimates from Rentrak.

It witnessed a 47 percent decline from last weekend's debut. This fifth installment of the Tom Cruise-led action franchise surpassed the 100 million ticket sales mark this weekend, which has grossed $108.6 million in ten days of its release.

Opening at 3,995 locations, Fox's "Fantastic Four" took the second place with a weak start of $26.2 million sales in ticket sales this weekend, Xinhua reported.

"Fantastic Four" opened a disappointing 53.3 percent behind 2005's "Fantastic Four", which debuted with $56.1 million. And it opened 55 percent behind the $58.05 million debut of 2007's "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer."

The audience breakdown for the film skewed towards male moviegoers (60 percent) and towards moviegoers over the age of 25 (51 percent).

"Fantastic Four" earned a poor "C-" rating from first-night moviegoers on CinemaScore, and it held a poor 9 percent approval rating on the review-aggregate site RottenTomatoes.

New studio STX's R-rated thriller "The Gift", starring and directed by Australian actor Joel Edgerton, opened third this weekend with $12 million.

Rounding out the rest of the 10 top movies this weekend in the US and Canada were "Vacation" ($9.1 million), "Ant-Man" ($7.8 million), "Minions" ($7.4 million), "Richi and the Flash" ($7 million), "Trainwreck" ($6.3 million), "Pixels" ($5.4 million) and "Southpaw" ($4.8 million).