By Lisa Richwine

LOS ANGELES |
Sun Jul 31, 2011 3:20pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The tiny blue “Smurfs” battled big-name, big-budget “Cowboys Aliens” to a surprising tie at the domestic weekend box office with each film ringing up an estimated $36.2 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates on Sunday.

“The Smurfs” live-action and animated 3D film drew families to the latest adventure of the classic Belgian cartoon characters and grossed higher-than-expected sales. “Cowboys Aliens” fell short of pre-release estimates from box-office watchers.

The totals are estimates of ticket sales from United States and Canadian theaters for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The leader will not be known until actual sales are tallied on Monday.

Going into the weekend, “Cowboys Aliens” was seen easily topping box-office charts with starpower from James Bond actor Daniel Craig and “Indiana Jones” star Harrison Ford, plus director Jon Favreau from the hit “Iron Man” series and Steven Spielberg among the producers. The film is set in the Wild West in 1873, when a spaceship arrives in Arizona and runs into a posse of cowboys.

The movie offered “a fresh and unique concept,” said Nikki Rocco, president of distribution for Universal Pictures, a division of Comcast Corp that released the film. “It was a bet worth taking with these filmmakers.”

A lower-than-expected total for “Cowboys Aliens” collided with a bigger draw from “The Smurfs,” a movie that revived characters that debuted more than 50 years ago.

“In the summer, family films are a hot commodity,” Paul Dergarabedian, box office analyst with Hollywood.com, said of the “Smurfs”

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