With school holidays now officially underway the UK box office saw a battle for the key children's market at the weekend as Columbia TriStar launched Stuart Little 2 into direct competition against Warner Bros chart-topping holdover Scooby-Doo.

However Scooby-Doo eased to victory with a mighty second weekend take of $3.96m (£2.5m), dropping off just 23% from its opening three-day gross. Playing at 474 sites Warner's CGI-canine recorded an impressive average of $8,364 and now boasts a 10-day total of $14.9m.

Stuart Little 2 opened well but claimed just third position in the chart (behind Minority Report's $3.2m from 402 sites) with a weekend gross of $2.1m (£1.3m). The sequel to the 2000 hit played 473 sites for a healthy average of $4,480 but did not perform as well as might have been expected (see separate news story).

Scooby-Doo looks set to be one of the summer's biggest hits in the UK and follows a good pedigree of children's summer titles featuring CGI animals. The original Stuart Little grossed a massive $28.1m (£17.8m) to end the year as the sixth biggest earner of 2000. Similarly, last year saw Warner's Cats & Dogs land fifth place in the year's top films chart with a total gross of $37.3m (£23.7m).

Pathe's Resident Evil dropped off 35% in its second week to take fourth position with a good $818,019 (£518,624) at 267 sites for an average of $3,064. Rounding out the top five was Spider-Man. Columbia's hit dropped off just 26% in its sixth weekend on release bringing its cumulative total to $41.4m (£26.3m).

New to the chart this week was Entertainment's Jason X, the tenth film in the Friday The 13th horror franchise. The title slashed its way to eighth place in the chart with a three-day take of $365,536 (£231,750) from 153 sites for a $2,389 average. The result shows there is still life in this 20 year old plus franchise which saw the last entry Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday go straight to video in 1994. This bodes well for BVI which will release the eighth title in the, nearly 25 year old, Halloween franchise (Halloween: Resurrection) in October.

Also debuting was Eros International's Om Jai Jagdish. The film took $74,703 (£47,362) from 23 sites - an average of $3,248 - and claimed 13th position joining its stable-mate Devdas in the chart. Devdas managed $391,672 (£248,320) over its second weekend on release and found seventh position.

Worthy of note BVI's Bad Company dropped off just 19% in its second weekend from its opening to retain sixth position with $486,049 (£308,155). The action comedy clearly suffered last week from opening against Resident Evil, which dropped off 35% this week.