Consider: The original Sherlock Holmes earned more than $62 million its opening weekend two years ago when it debuted on approximately 3,600 screens. The sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, earned an estimated $40 million this weekend on 3,700 screens. What do you deduce from that? It’s elementary, my dear reader. Perhaps people are tired of Sherlock Holmes—at least this Holmes, more akin to an action hero than a detective in a houndstooth hat. Or maybe they’re sick of sequels. Or maybe they don’t have the money to go to movies. Or maybe they didn’t want to see Robert Downey, Jr. in drag. Or—
OK, so maybe it’s not all that elementary. The movie business in 2011 looks like it’s been gnawed by the Hound of the Baskervilles this year, and executives are going crazy trying to decipher just what moviegoers want these days. They had assumed that we ticket-buyers were hankering for more of what we bought tickets for in the past, and that’s led to a steady parade of sequels. But it seems these cinematic addendums are losing steam: Game of Shadows won the box office this weekend, but no one at Warner Brothers is turning cartwheels. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked—a sequel of a sequel—finished second with $23.5 million. But that was waaaay off the $49.9 million Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel made two years ago.
Clearly sequels aren’t the answer. Or maybe it’s just bad sequels that folks aren’t so inclined to see. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol made $13 million in limited release. The new Tom Cruise thriller, fourth in the series and perhaps the best of the bunch, plowed its way to its third-place finish by showing up on just 425 screens.
New Year’s Eve, a sequel of sorts to last year’s Valentine’s Day, slipped from first to fourth, collecting $7.4 million. (The Sitter—a movie that has hopefully killed any chance of it getting a sequel itself—finished fifth with $4.4 million.)
I suppose we can’t blame Hollywood for regurgitating the same ol’ ideas every year, though. The top seven films this year—from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 to Cars 2—are all sequels. Superhero movies Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger, which hold down the eighth and 10th spots respectively, are essentially lead-ins to next year’s massive Avengers sequel. And ninth-place Rise of the Planet of the Apes? What would you categorize that? A sequel? A reboot? Whatever it is, Ceasar the ape is not exactly a stranger to the big screen. You don’t find a really “original” movie until The Help in 11th place.
And, of course, that was based on a book.
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