The idea that lightning can strike in the same place twice took a hit over the weekend, with New Year’s Eve, the star-studded follow-up to Valentine’s Day, topping the US box ofice but with a very tepid $13.7 million. With a cast that includes Michelle Pfeiffer, Zac Efron, Ashton Kutcher, Katherine Heigl, Lea Michele, Robert De Niro, Josh Duhamel, Halle Berry, Abigail Breslin, Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, Hilary Swank and Seth Meyer, Warner Bros had been expecting it to make over $20 million, especially since it’s predecessor opened to $72 million 18 months ago.

Quite why Warner didn’t actually open the movie at New Year is still a bit of a mystery, as you’d have expected it to do better then.

New Year’s Eve wasn’t the only movie that was met with a giant ‘meh’ by US audiences, as the new Jonah Hill film The Sitter took $10 million to place second. It was about in line with not very high expectations.

While early December isn’t usually a great time at the box office, last weekend wasn’t just weak, it was the lowest grossing weekend overall since September 5th-7th 2008, showing just how weak things are at the moment – indeed many in Hollywood are wondering what’s happened to the audience. While cinemas had reason to cheer in the summer, the rest of the year has been pretty bad for them, and they’re now desperately hoping for a huge Christmas movie that’ll help save what could otherwise be a pretty dismal 12 months at the box office.

General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser