Weekend Box Office (12/18/11): Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked underwhelm compared to predecessors while Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol sizzles in IMAX debut.

This was a weekend where two films gave the strongest evidence yet that there may be some kind of 'slump' in domestic box office while a third stood as a firm 'It's the movie, stupid!' rebuttal.  The two main wide releases, heavily marketed sequels to exceptionally popular originals, opened at levels far below their predecessors.  The top film of the weekend was Sherlock Homes: A Game of Shadows (review), which debuted with a seemingly solid $40 million.  But the sequel opened 36% lower than the first Sherlock Holmes opened with over Christmas weekend two years ago ($62 million).  That's a pretty big drop, especially when it wasn't exactly contending with the $75 million-grossing second weekend of Avatar this time around.  I've long been of the opinion that the pre-Christmas weekend is among the strongest to open a film, as you can parlay your opening weekend into two full weeks of 'school vacation' time and get some occasionally incredible legs (essay).  The film cost $125 million, which is a touch more than the $90 million original, but still not a case of overspending on a sequel.  It remains to see whether this frankly shockingly depressed opening is a case of moviegoers not having an interest in the continuing adventures of this variation on Sherlock Holmes or whether it's merely a case of it not being appointment viewing.  Also not helping matters was the blogosphere obsessing about a seven-minute Dark Knight Rises prologue (which actually kinda stunk) that was playing in 40 IMAX theaters showing Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol while ignoring the actual Dark Knight Rises trailer (which is officially offline until I presume Monday morning) that was attached to all prints of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.

Pre-release tracking for The Muppets shows that today's kids are assholes.

The New York Magazine blog Vulture has an article detailing the box office tracking for the three major family-skewing Thanksgiving releases set to drop this Wednesday.  For the purposes of this commentary, we'll be focusing on the pre-release data for The Muppets (review).  It appears that we are raising a nation of Statler and Waldorfs... According to NRG research polls:

Can Sex & the City 2 overcome the TV-sequels curse? Is it Star Trek: the Wrath of Khan or X-Files: I Want to Believe?

As most of you know, Sex & the City 2 opens worldwide on Thursday, May 27th. Expectations are running high, with the general consensus that it will perform in a similar fashion to the first picture ($57 million opening weekend, $152 million domestic total). But the odds are indeed stacked against it. There are two major issues at play. First, and more obviously, the $95 million picture (costing $30 million more than the first film) will have to overcome the infamous Tomb Raider trap. For those new to this site, the Tomb Raider trap (named for the enjoyable adventure yarn that is Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life) is the phenomenon in which a generally-disliked film becomes a smash hit based purely on marketing and hype. But the arguably superior sequel flops or under-performs because even though it is a better movie, audiences aren't willing to take the chance again (other instances of this phenomenon include Addams Family Values and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian). Unless you were a die-hard fan of the original show, you probably didn't care much for the original Sex and the City movie. So theoretically only the hardcore fans will check this one out this time, right? But the real danger is the fact that it is a sequel to a film that was itself based on a television series. It's a tiny genre, one that is made up of either out-of-the-park smash hits or out and out flops. If it ends up as an example of the latter, the Carrie Bradshaw sequel should be thrilled to gross 1/2 of what the original made.