Matt Damon as Jason Bourne in a scene from 'The Bourne Ultimatum'. - Contributed

LOS ANGELES (Reuters):

The amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne is back, and this time he clobbered Homer Simpson.

The Bourne Ultimatum, the third movie in the espionage action series starring Matt Damon as a one-time CIA hit man searching for his past, grossed US$70.2 million its opening weekend to rank as North America's top film at the box office, according to studio estimates on Sunday.

That tally marks the biggest first weekend ever for a movie in the month of August, surpassing the USUS$67.4 million opening posted by Rush Hour 2 the same weekend in 2001, according to Bourne distributor Universal Pictures.

The latest Bourne total also far exceeded the debut ticket sales generated by the first two films in the franchise.

Box-office champion

By comparison, The Bourne Identity opened at No. 2 with US$27.1 million in June 2002, and the The Bourne Supremacy landed at number one in July 2004 with US$52.5 million.

Those two films went on to gross nearly US$485 million worldwide combined.

Last week's domestic box office champion, The Simpsons Movie, a feature-length version of the long-running TV cartoon, slipped to second place in its second weekend with US$25.6 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales.

Despite its 65 per cent drop-off from week to week, The Simpsons, from 20th Century Fox, has now racked up about US$128.6 million domestically.

Universal Pictures is a division of NBC Universal, which is controlled by General Electric Co., while News Corp. owns 20th Century Fox.