Paramount Pictures has a hit on its hands with G.I. Joe: Retaliation. For a film franchise with a rocky-at-best reputation because of 2009's G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, it might come as a surpass at how well the sequel performed, but a lot of the credit is being handed to director Jon M. Chu for assembling an impressive cast and an action-packed story.

The film earned $41.2 million domestically over the weekend, plus an extra $10 million on its early Thursday opening night, which helped to boost the worldwide total to $132 million. That marks a better opening weekend than The Rise of Cobra, and puts Retaliation on track to meet, and most likely surpass, that film's $302 million worldwide gross.

Retaliation places the Joes on the defensive as Cobra launches a massive campaign to overthrow the U.S. government and paint the covert military team as the bad guys. Dwayne Johnson, Bruce Willis, Channing Tatum, Byung-hun Lee, Ray Park, Adrianne Palicki, D.J. Cotronoa, Ray Stevenson and Wolton Goggins star.

The other studios seemed to shy away from the weekend, with only one other major new release cracking the top five: Tyler Perry's Temptation, which came in third with $22.3 million under DreamWorks' The Croods (in the No. 2 spot at $26.5 million). Olympus Has Fallen and Oz the Great and Powerful rounded out the top five with $14 million and $11.6 million, respectively.