Corona | Coming Attractions

Sunday estimates for the weekend's box office peg Paramount's newly relaunched Star Trek franchise as a stellar success. In its opening weekend Star Trek grossed an estimated $76.5 million dollars from 3,849 screens, giving the picture an average of $18,836 per screen.

Paramount had to downgrade its actuals from the film's early Thursday screenings by three million dollars to $4 million but the film's debut is at the higher end of analysts' expectations. The film's budget is estimated to float somewhere between $150 million to $200 million, and with a pricey advertising campaign too that may cost Paramount close to $100m itself.

As for how the film fares in the Star Trek franchise, the movie's $76.5m weekend opening is the best ever in the series. It surpasses the last Star Trek picture, 2002's Nemesis, by $54 million. 2009's Star Trek already is perched as the fifth-highest grossing Star Trek film of all-time and just $33m away from becoming the number one highest-grossing Trek (currently it's The Voyage Home with a $109 million domestic rake.)