J.j. Abrams, Steven Spielberg | featured news

On a scale of 10, Super 8 pretty much scored an eight by collecting $12.2 million on Friday, according to early estimates. (It also grossed $1 million on Thursday from Twitter-publicized screenings at 324 theaters.) The sci-fi adventure, directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg, was never expected to leave the train station with huge numbers, with industry insiders predicting a $30 million opening. But Super 8 is now on track for a debut of about $34 million. The PG-13 movie will likely fall a bit short of the opening gross of the 2008 Abrams-produced monster flick Cloverfield, which gobbled up $40.1 million its first weekend. But for a $50 million film starring a mostly no-name cast, this is still a solid start.

The trailer for “Super 8” launched on Twitter. And now the movie will as well. Paramount announced today that J.J. Abrams’s Spielbergian monster movie will open Thursday, a day earlier than its scheduled midnight Friday release date, on about 300 screens around the country. In partnership with Twitter, the studio is directing people to #Super8Secret, a sponsored hashtag that takes Twitter users to a direct link to buy tickets for the Thursday screenings.