According to studio estimates issued on Sunday, the Paramount Pictures release earned about $37 million during its first three days of release, exceeding the studio's low-ball forecast in the $25 million to $30 million range.
The film earned an additional $1 million through a Twitter-related round of sneak previews on Thursday.
In a summer of sequels and superheroes, "Super 8" is the first original, live-action non-sequel to take the No. 1 slot in almost three months. The thriller "Limitless" led the field during the weekend of March 18-20.
Last weekend's champion, "X-Men: First Class," the fifth entry in the Marvel comic book series, slipped to No. 2 with $25.0 million. It was followed by "The Hangover, Part II" with $18.5 million in its third weekend.
The only other new entry in the top 10 bombed. The kids movie "Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer" opened at No. 7 with just $6.3 million, coming in at the low end of expectations in the $6 million to $10 million range.
The advance buzz for "Super 8" was hardly deafening, even with the A-list imprimatur of J.J. Abrams as writer/director and Steven Spielberg as a producer. Abrams convinced skeptical Paramount executives to run a campaign that retained a sense of old-fashioned mystery, earning scorn from industry pundits as surveys showed little enthusiasm among prospective moviegoers.
The plot centers on a group of kids in a small Ohio town who spend the summer of 1979 making a home movie using the 8mm film format that was popular back then and from which the film gets its title. They witness a train crash, which triggers a series of inexplicable events and disappearances. The trailer deliberately did not show the alien creature around which the film revolves.
As industry pundits began to second-guess the strategy, Paramount last week announced the film would open a day ahead of schedule on Thursday in a sneak-preview promotion with Twitter. A glimpse of the creature was also sent online.
The last-minute fix, along with overwhelmingly positive reviews, seemed to do the trick. The film cost a relatively modest $50 million to make, according to Paramount.
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