Disney's frog hops to top in US

The Disney film went on limited release in the US on 25 November

The Princess and the Frog, the latest animated film from Disney, has topped the North America box office chart in its first weekend on wide release.

The family fantasy made $25m (£15.4m) over the weekend, knocking last week's top movie The Blind Side down to two.

Invictus, Clint Eastwood's film about 1995's Rugby World Cup in South Africa, took the third spot with first weekend takings of $9.1m (£5.6m).

Twilight sequel New Moon and Disney's A Christmas Carol complete the top five.

The Princess and the Frog marks the Disney studio's first feature in traditional, hand-drawn animation since 2004's Home on the Range.

'Classic'
It has made headlines in the US for having an African-American heroine, voiced by Dreamgirls star Anika Nonie Rose.

"It's one of those classic Disney fairy tales and people just fell in love with it," said Chuck Viane of Disney's Buena Vista unit.

The film, set in New Orleans in the 1920s, opens in the UK on 5 February.

Invictus, which stars Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, is considered a strong contender in the Hollywood awards season.
So is Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones, which made its US debut in three cinemas over the weekend.

Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz star in the adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel about a murdered girl looking back on her grieving family from the afterlife.

According to Paul Dergarabedian of box office tracker Hollywood.com, the North American box office hit a new high in 2009 with takings of $9.79 billion (£6.02 billion).

This Friday sees James Cameron's heavily hyped science-fiction fantasy Avatar open on both sides of the Atlantic.