“Inception” grossed an estimated $60.4 million during its opening weekend in North America theaters, Warner Bros. said today. That’s an impressive haul for an original with a tough-to-describe concept that the Hollywood Reporter was calling a “marketing nightmare” a week ago. The question is whether “Inception,” which has an overall B+ rating at CinemaScore (it climbs to A among younger audience members) will generate good enough word-of-mouth in subsequent weeks to cover a reported $160 million budget, plus over $100M in marketing costs.

The weekend’s big loser, as expected, was Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer’s “The Sorceror’s Apprentice,” which didn’t even meet modest forecasts, bombing in third place with an embarassing $17.4M from Friday to Sunday, for a pathetic $24.5M cume since the Wednesday opening. “sorceror,” starring Nicolas Cage, distantly trailed the No. 2 film, Universal’s surprise hit “Despicable Me” which collected another $32 million in its second weekend.