SUPER 8: IT’S A ($25.5M) TAKE!

Paramount executives were no doubt congratulating one another on Monday as the final tally for Super 8 came in at $35.5 million, exceeding analysts’ predictions on Friday of around $25-30 million (although coming in below Sunday’s estimate of around $37 million). It also manage to knock off last week’s No. 1 film, X-Men: First Class from its perch. That film dropped 55 percent from its first-week to $24.1 million (also below Sunday’s estimate). Still, Super 8‘s gross was well below last year’s take of $55.7 million for The Karate Kid remake, which led the box office during the comparable weekend. Overall, total ticket sales were down 9 percent from a year ago.

The top ten films over the weekend, according to final figures compiled by Box Office Mojo (figures in parentheses represent total gross to date):
1. Super 8, Paramount, $35,451,168, 1 Wk., $36,451,168 — From Thursday); 2. X-Men: First Class, 20th Century Fox, $24,128,986, 2 Wks. ($98,023,335); 3. The Hangover: II, Warner Bros., $17,667,329, 3 Wks. ($215,727,461); 4. Kung Fu Panda 2, Paramount, $16,543,166, 3 Wks. ($126,813,240); 5. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Disney, $10,945,764, 4 Wks. ($208,873,258); 6. Bridesmaids, Universal, $10,066,290, 4 Wks. ($123,815,865); 7. Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer, Relativity Media, $6,076,859, (New); 8. Midnight in Paris, SPC, $5,830,723, 4 Wks. ($13,909,196); 9. Thor, Paramount, $2,435,215, 6 Wks. ($173,664,723); 10. Fast Five, Universal, $1,727,330, 7 Wks. ($205,094,205).