Happy Monday, Everyone.
Because they had nowhere to go but up, box office receipts improved 64 percent over last weekend. But before you start breaking out the party hats, the “Sherlock Holmes” sequel starring Robert Downey Jr. and the new entry in the “Chipmunks” franchise each had soft openings. With just a few weeks left in 2011, Hollywood is set to have a worse year than it did in 2010.
From BoxOffice Mojo, here’s the weekend by the numbers:
| TW | LW | Title (click to view) | Studio | Weekend Gross | % Change | Theater Count /Change | Average | Total Gross | Budget* | Week # | |
| 1 | N | Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows | WB | $40,020,000 | – | 3,703 | – | $10,807 | $40,020,000 | – | 1 |
| 2 | N | Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked | Fox | $23,500,000 | – | 3,723 | – | $6,312 | $23,500,000 | $75 | 1 |
| 3 | N | Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol | Par. | $13,000,000 | – | 425 | – | $30,588 | $13,600,000 | $140 | 1 |
| 4 | 1 | New Year’s Eve | WB (NL) | $7,420,000 | -43.0% | 3,505 | – | $2,117 | $24,826,000 | $56 | 2 |
| 5 | 2 | The Sitter | Fox | $4,400,000 | -55.3% | 2,752 | +2 | $1,599 | $17,721,000 | $25 | 2 |
| 6 | 3 | The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 | Sum. | $4,300,000 | -45.0% | 2,958 | -646 | $1,454 | $266,400,000 | $110 | 5 |
| 7 | 18 | Young Adult | Par. | $3,650,000 | +1,076.4% | 986 | +978 | $3,702 | $4,090,000 | $12 | 2 |
| 8 | 6 | Hugo | Par. | $3,625,000 | -40.1% | 2,532 | -76 | $1,432 | $39,073,000 | – | 4 |
| 9 | 5 | Arthur Christmas | Sony | $3,600,000 | -44.7% | 2,929 | -343 | $1,229 | $38,547,000 | – | 4 |
| 10 | 4 | The Muppets | BV | $3,454,000 | -50.5% | 2,808 | -520 | $1,230 | $70,928,000 | $45 | 4 |
Writing in the pages of Mediaite over the weekend, Philip Bump suggests there’s a pretty simple explanation for why box office receipts are on pace to be $1 billion lower than they were last year: with a constant stream of reboots and retreads, this year’s crop of movies just wasn’t all that good.
But he also suggests that filmgoers got the movies they deserved. The ones that performed best, he notes, happened to score worst on The Rotten Tomatoes ratings scale.
Here’s the nut graf:
“The only period during which 2011 was doing better was in the late summer – and that’s almost entirely due to The Help. Without The Help‘s four-week run, the average score for the year would have been a point-and-a-half lower.
By Rotten Tomatoes’ own metric of “rottenness,” which a movie achieves with a score less than 60, rotten movies led the pack 24 weeks last year, compared with 25 this year. But bear in mind – we still have several weeks left.
It’s worth noting, though, that receipts in general were down. The top 12-grossing movies each week earned $13 million less on average in 2011 than in 2010 – accounting for half a billion dollars in drop-off alone.”
Read the full story here.
The Cineaste's Lament. 
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