Star Trek is a hit, and what’s more it’s an even bigger hit than we thought. The box office reports you see on Sunday night and Monday morning are based, at least in part, on generally accurate estimates which calculate the number of people who will see the movie on Sunday based on the number of people who saw it on Friday and Saturday. This weekend, those estimates were off.

If you checked out Scott’s box office report on Sunday you know that those original estimates pegged the movie as earning $72 million over the three day weekend. Now the real numbers are in, and Star Trek did even better than anyone thought. Variety says it did around $3 million better.

Experts believe the unexpected bump came courtesy of mother’s day. Apparently there are a lot of Trekkie mom’s out there and Trek pulled in a lot of families looking for something fun to do. That puts the movie’s official 3-day total at $76.5 million and if you throw in those sneak peek showings on Thursday it made a little more than $79 million all told.

It’s still less than Wolverine’s $87 million debut the weekend before, but not so much less. Star Trek is also less likely to suffer the massive drop in audience Wolvy suffered in its second week, as interested X-men fans chose Trek instead. Star Trek has only to contend with Angels & Demons for its second weekend, a film which caters to a very different audience. Also working in Trek’s favor is good buzz, something Wolverine hasn’t had. Trek may have lost the initial battle, but before it’s all over odds are it’ll win the box office war.