If Hollywood was hoping for a little pre-Christmas cheer, it didn’t get much over the weekend, after disappointing debuts for two movies there’d been high hopes for. Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows topped the chart with $40 million, more than $20 million down on the first movie’s take during Christmas 2009. It’s even lower than Tron: Legacy, which opened to weak reviews this weekend last year.

As A Game Of Shadows had good reviews and strong word of mouth, it’s not certain what happened to the audience (Warner Bros had been expecting a $50 million+ opening), but it does suggest it’s not just a dearth of decent films that’s causing people to stay away from the multiplex.

Doing even worse was Alvin & the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, which took $23.5 million, less than half what it’s predescessor made.

The one bright spot at the US box office was Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, which took $13 million in limited released on only 425 IMAX and large screens cinemas. While it suggests the film will do well when it expands onto normal screens later this week, some may worry that the IMAX numbers were heavily skewed by the inclusion of a six-minute prologue to The Dark Knight Rises, and that without that (it won’t be included in normal cinemas), it’s still difficult to know just how well the new Mission: Impossible movie will do.

Hollywood is likely to be worrying a lot at the moment. Studios have spent more than $600 million on movies being released in December, and so far every weekend has been significantly down on the comparable weekend from a year ago. They’re going to be hoping for a stellar period between Christmas and New Year to make up lost ground or it’s going to be a very bad end to a very up and down year.

General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser