This past weekend’s box office was certainly a good one for genre films.

The J.J Abrams directed/Steven Spielberg produced retro-science fiction film ‘Super 8’ opened much bigger than industry experts expected with $35.4 million to place first. Industry predictions put the films opening between $20 and $30 million. Earlier in the week, Paramount seemed a bit nervous about the films drawing power and decided to do a first-of-its-kind select theater preview that was tied with in with Twitter. They also released a last minute trailer that gave a quick glimpse of the film’s monster. These last minute changes seemed to do the trick.

Last week’s #1 film, Marvel’s ‘X-Men: First Class’, dropped to second, but took in another $24.1 million bringing its’ domestic total to $98 million and its’ worldwide box office total to $221 million. The film has a chance at beating the first ‘X-Men’ film which took in $296 million. But, it’s chances of beating ‘X2: X-Men United’ ($407m), ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’ ($459m) or even ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ ($373m) are slim-to-none.

Disney’s ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides’ dropped to fifth place taking in $10.9 million. ‘On Stranger Tides’ has now grossed a whopping $886 million worldwide and its still going. The ‘Pirates’ franchise has now taken in more than $3.6 billion (with a b) and will probably hit the $4 billion mark when DVD/Blu-ray sales are taken into account. Wow.

Marvel/Disney’s ‘Thor’ took in an additional $2.4 million to place ninth. The God of Thunder has now taken in more than $431 million at the worldwide box office. Take that Loki.

1. ‘Super 8’    $35.4
2. ‘X-Men: First Class’   $24.1
3. ‘The Hangover Part II’  $17.6 
4. ‘Kung Fu Panda 2’   $16.5
5. ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: OST’ $10.9
6. ‘Bridesmaids’    $10.0
7. ‘JUdy Moody & the NOT Bummer Summer’ $6.0
8. ‘Midnight in Paris’   $5.8
9. ‘Thor’    $2.4
10. ‘Fast Five’    $1.7