'The Heat,' with Melissa McCarthy, left, and Sandra Bullock, took the No.2 spot in its opening weekend.  Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy brought "The Heat" against Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx at the box office.  The Fox action-comedy starring the funny ladies as mismatched detectives earned $40 million in second place in its opening weekend, topping the $25.7 million debut haul of Sony's "White House Down," according to studio estimates Sunday.  The Walt Disney Co. Pixar animated prequel, "Monsters University," remained the box office's big man on campus in its second weekend, earning $46.1 million in first place.  Overall, movie-theater revenue and attendance are now both down just 2% compared from the same period last year, said Paul Dergarabedian, an analyst for box-office tracker Hollywood.com., and this weekend's films grossed 8.5% less than last year. when Universal's "Ted" opened with $54.4 million at the box office. He said those numbers could shift further next week when Disney's "The Lone Ranger" and Universal's "Despicable Me 2" debut.  As for "The Heat," employing two female leads to buck the male-dominated buddy-cop formula paid off in ticket sales.  "I think the fact that we have a female-centric movie standing out in a forest of giant tent-pole movies is phenomenal," said Chris Aronson, president of domestic distribution for Twentieth Century Fox.  "Audiences really responded. We positioned this to be a female event movie, and we got the opening that we were hoping for this weekend," he said.  (Twentieth Century Fox is a unit of 21st Century Fox, which until last week was part of the same company as Wall Street Journal owner News Corp .)  "White House Down," which features Mr. Tatum as a wannabe Secret Service agent and Mr. Foxx as the president of the U.S., came in below expectations in fourth place. The film's White House takeover plot is strikingly similar to FilmDistrict's "Olympus Has Fallen," which opened in March and starred Gerard Butler and Aaron Eckhart.  "It turned out to be a very competitive weekend," said Rory Bruer, Sony Pictures Entertainment's president of world-wide distribution. "We had hoped 'White House Down' did better, just from the standpoint that we love this film, but I feel very hopeful that with the July Fourth holiday coming up, it will be the perfect film for audiences, and it'll really add up for us."  Meanwhile, Viacom Inc. unit Paramount's globe-trotting zombie thriller "World War Z," starring Brad Pitt, took another bite out of the box office in its second weekend with $29.8 million.  "I think the variety of films is what brought people out to the movie theaters," said Hollywood.com's Mr. Dergarabedian. "There is a G-rated movie at the top of the chart and an R-rated movie in second place. That says a lot about the summer marketplace and how a unique slate of films can propel the box office."  A version of this article appeared July 1, 2013, on page B6 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: 'Monsters' Retains No. 1 Movie Slot.
Monsters University came in as No. 1 at the weekend box office, while the female-cop movie The Heat bested action drama White House Down.