LOS ANGELES: The latest Tolkien blockbuster, “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” held on atop North America’s weekend box office, keeping TV “Anchorman” Ron Burgundy from making number one news, figures showed Monday.

The second part of “The Hobbit” film trilogy, starring Ian McKellen and Martin Freeman, earned $31.5 million on its second weekend, according to box office tracker Exhibitor Relations.

The series, directed by Peter Jackson, follows his other mega-hit trilogy adapted from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.”

In second place, debuting with $26.8 million in ticket sales, was “Anchorman 2,” the heavily-marketed sequel to the popular Will Ferrell comedy about screwball newsman Burgundy. While respectable, the figure is relatively disappointing for the sequel. “’Anchorman 2’ box office: What happened?” headlined the Los Angeles Times, noting it earned less than the 2004 original’s opening weekend.

Possible reasons included over-marketing — Burgundy has been so ubiquitous in recent weeks that people already “feel like they had gotten their fill of the character,” it said — as well as stronger competition, and the possibility that “older fans had moved on.”

Slipping to third place was Disney animated musical “Frozen,” with a $19.6 million take.

The 53rd movie in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, which began with “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” in 1937, “Frozen” is loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairytale “The Snow Queen.”

Comedy “American Hustle” — starring Christian Bale and Amy Adams as a hustler couple, and Bradley Cooper as the FBI agent they team up with to bring down other con artists — rose to fourth place on the film’s first week in national release.