Star Trek Into the Darkness leads at the box office

Star Trek Into Darkness topped the US box office on its North American opening weekend with $84.1 million, easily outpacing the $79.2 million bow of the  2009 instalment of the franchise.

Directed by JJ Abram, who was behind rebooting Star Trek, the Sci-fi blockbuster features the return of Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto in the roles of Captain Kirk and Spock respectively, and other cast members including Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin and Karl Urban. British actor, Benedict Cumberbatch, plays the superhuman villains who wreaks havoc on earth.

Overseas, where it was opened last weekend, the 3D tentpole added another $40 million over this weekend, reaching a global cume of $164.6 million.

Star Trek faced a tough competition from the second in the charts, Iran Man 3, which managed to rack $35 million in its third weekend in the US and $40,2 million abroad in its fourth weekend. The action thriller has now made $337.1 million domestically and $736.2 internationally, reaching a $1.05 billion cume.

Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby was also a formidable contender, appealing to a different kind of audiences, particularly women. Landing in the third spot in the US, the 3D romantic drama grossed $23.4 million in its second weekend of release. It had also an impressive debut offshore, following its international premiere at Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, taking in $42.1 millions and claiming the top spot.

This weekend was completely dominated by the above pictures, for the fourth ranking movie the US box office was Pain and Gain, which took only $3.1 millions, followed by The croods, with $2.8 million.