'New Year's Eve' leads a lackluster box office

By Sarah Sluis

The period from Thanksgiving to New Year's is usually filled with good movies, but early December tends to be sluggish at the box office as people focus on holiday gift shopping. This weekend, which totaled just $78 million, posted the lowest numbers since September 5-7, 2008. That's not good news. The leader of the pack was New Year's Eve, a romantic comedy releasing well in advance of its holiday. With just $13.5 million, the star-filled ensemble picture performed short of expectations that had the film inching closer to $20 million.

In second place, the R-rated babysitting comedy The Sitter grabbed $10 million. So-so viewer feedback, as evidenced by the movie's C+ CinemaScore, could have this movie hurting in coming weeks. However, a small budget and healthy returns from younger moviegoers could make the Jonah Hill starrer profitable for Fox.

With no new family films, existing fare posted strong holds. Arthur Christmas dropped just 10% to $6.6 million as the titular holiday approaches. One spot below, Hugo fell 19% to $6.1 million. The Martin Scorsese-directed picture reportedly cost over $100 million, so its U.S. total of $33 million to date is far behind where such movies usually are after three weeks. The Muppets continued its trend of bigger week-to-week drops with a 36% dive to $7 million. Happy Feet Two held on in the top ten, sliding to eighth place with $3.7 million and a 36% decrease in receipts.

New specialty pictures fared much better than wide ones. In eight locations, Young Adult nabbed $40,000 per theatre. The espionage thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy averaged $75,000 per screen in half the locations. Both movies' debuts put them in a good position for expansion and awards season. Finally, We Need to Talk about Kevin, which seemed to inspire a "love it or hate it" critical reaction, had a softer $24,000 debut playing on one screen. The indie The Descendants added 300 theatres to go up .9% from last week and add another $4.8 million to its $23 million total. The push for The Artist is still heating up. Its 38% improvement from last week, as well as its $18,000 per-screen average, show this black-and-white silent feature has a lot of momentum.

This Friday, another family picture, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, will add to the already-saturated kid market. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows will provide some action fun, and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol will have a limited, IMAX-only release.