This weekend was supposed to turn all that bad box office news around for Hollywood,  but both saviors that went into wide release yesterday are not only trailing their predecessors (as you’ll see below), they are falling well below expectations. “Entertainment Weekly” predicted “Sherlock 2″ and “Chipwrecked” would open to $54 million and $30 million respectively, which is low compared to some others.  If these numbers hold, the silver bullet Hollywood assumed would solve all their problems suddenly won’t look all that silver.

If these two franchises, these two titles, these two pieces of product can’t put butts in seats — what can?

And how do you blame Redbox and piracy on this one?

DHD:

Sources are starting to send me more numbers for today. Both Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (Warner Bros) as well as Alvin And The Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (Fox) are badly trailing their previous installments. (Sherlock 1/$62.3M vs Sherlock 2/$42.4M and Alvin 2/$48.8M vs Alvin 3/$25.8M.) The Robert Downey Jr-starring and Guy Ritchie-directed Sherlock 2 includes $1.25M from 1,650 midnight shows. It’s early yet but audiences seem to be rejecting sequels and threequels. Of course, the movie studios point out that both the last Sherlock and Alvin opened either on Christmas or after kids were already out of school. Execs are hoping to make up the difference before year’s end. But more pics will open, too, creating clutter. So if this weekend’s low grosses continue, then the domestic box office slump may very well ruin Christmas for Hollywood.

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Christian Bale sure could have used that Bat utility belt while visiting a blind Chinese activist this week.

The star of director Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, in China as part of the promotional push behind his new film “The Flowers of War,” got roughed up by Chinese security guards when he tried to visit a blind legal activist in the Communist country.

It’s precisely the kind of freedom-stifling moment celebrities typically rally around. Will anyone save Richard Gere, a consistent voice criticizing China regarding its policy toward Tibet, step up and support Bale’s efforts?

Bale, who plays crime-fighting superhero Batman, and a camera crew from CNN were jostled by men in plainclothes in Dongshigu village in eastern Shandong province, where activist Chen Guangcheng has been under house arrest for 15 months, according to a video released by CNN on its website.

“Why can I not visit this man?” Bale asked several security officers, while they were pushing him….

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The death of Christopher Hitchens hits like the 2008 death of Tim Russert. Both were men you really wanted to hear from during  a looming presidential election.

The word being tossed about in reference to the passing of Hitchens is “contrarian,” and that strikes me as a little unfair. Hitchens could be infuriating and even wrong, but there was nothing dishonest or insincere about the man. Though it’s not the perfect definition of contrarian, I don’t believe for a second that Hitchens ever once took a stand simply to be provocative or contrary.

Hitchens was a truth-teller. Whether it was the war in Iraq, Mother Teresa, or Bill Maher’s trained seal audience, Hitchens always told what he believed to be the truth.

It was never as simple as opinion with Hitchens. What he was for or against rose above opinion. Again, he wasn’t always right (especially when it came to Mother Teresa), but his arguments never failed to be so beautifully designed that even when he was wrong, you had to respect the fact that so much study and thought and reasoning went into them.

Hitchens was incapable of lying and of insincerity, which is more complicated than being a contrarian, and that’s why I both admired and respected him.

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The Writers Guild of America-East is trying to reason with the Occupy Wall Street crowd.

Let’s see how that works out.

The WGA hearts the scruffy protesters, but the guild’s Eastern branch got into a snit after OWS members shut down the filming of a new “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” episode dealing with the hard-left movement.

So the guild took paper to pen, as it is wont to do, and asked that future protesters refrain from such activity in the future.

“The demonstrators’ actions were as misguided and inappropriate as the City of New York’s response – revoking ‘Law & Order’’s permit for the shoot and directing the dismantling of its set,” the union wrote. “Presumably the protesters and police did not set out to achieve a common end but together they prevented the scene from being filmed and the story from being told.”

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This is NOT a prequel to “Alien.”

Well, it’s 95% not a prequel…

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Twenty-four World War II veterans gathered in Hawaii last Friday to pay their respects to fellow soldiers who died during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 70 years ago. A Denver-based news reporter on the scene says the elderly veterans, many requiring wheelchairs, were shown very little respect by the crew of a CBS television show on the site.

Steffan Tubbs, co-host of “Colorado’s Morning News” on 850 KOA, posted information about the incident on his Facebook page shortly after the event. Now, both local and national media outlets are investigating what Tubbs calls a “freaking fiasco.”

Tubbs was part of a week-long trip to Hawaii to honor the memories of fallen soldiers as well as thank living veterans for their service. On Dec.9, the group – average age: 91 – held an emotional ceremony at the Punchbowl including the presentation of colors, the National Anthem and Taps, says Tubbs, a board member of The Greatest Generations Foundation, the Denver-based group which organized the trip.

Tubbs and the veterans. all but one Pearl Harbor survivors, weren’t allowed to complete the ceremony in private. Cast and crew from CBS’s “Hawaii Five-O” were also on the scene preparing to shoot footage for the cop show.

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The Wrap openly wonders if the recent collapse at the box office is more about a dwindling audience for films as opposed to a lack of titles moviegoers are interested in. If that proves to be the case, and we’ll know a lot more at the end of the year, that’s a real problem for Hollywood.

Why the studios chose to jam so many titles over the next two weekends and get out of  the way of “New Year’s Eve” and  “The Sitter” this last weekend makes absolutely no sense. 

The Wrap:

Moviegoers will have a lot to choose from under the big box office tree this Christmas holiday — in fact, they might even have too many choices.

Beginning next weekend with the release of “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol,” and sequels to “Alvin and the Chipmunks” and “Sherlock Holmes,” an unprecedented number of big studio films will be crowding into the domestic box office at the same time.

From Dec. 16 through Christmas Day, eight films will be released wide (see chart) – including two by Steven Spielberg – while about a half-dozen specialty titles will either enter the market or expand their footprint.

The major studios will be packing in these expensive films at a time when business has been weak, with box office revenue down 4 percent year-to-year and attendance plunging 5 percent, according to Hollywood.com’s Paul Dergarabedian.

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‘Tis the season for Oscar-bait films to get called on the carpet for their fidelity to the truth. Of course, not all films get this kind of scrutiny.

“My Week with Marilyn,” celebrated for its vibrant lead performance by Michelle Williams as the iconic Monroe, is currently under the microscope for not telling the whole truth.

It isn’t the first time a film with Oscar hopes has been questioned by the media. The 2001 film “A Beautiful Mind” got the cold shoulder for scrubbing the lead character’s less magnanimous side. Some argued John Nash, the inspiration behind Russell Crowe’s character, was both anti-semitic and a lousy father, charges Nash denied. The chatter threatened to derail the film’s Oscar chances, but it ended up winning multiple gold statuettes, including the coveted Best Picture award.

Some films which could use a bit of scrutiny, though, often get little or none.

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Looks like more of the same, which isn’t altogether a bad thing, but the Josh Brolin moment is inspired.

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Hollywood’s a little shell-shocked this morning. Not only was this the worst weekend of the year, it was worse than the post-September 11th Christmas season. The year-to-date news isn’t much better either. With only a few weeks left in 2011, revenues are down a total of 4% over last year. “Sherlock Holmes 2,” “MI:4,” and “Chipmunks 3,” “Tintin,” and “War Horse,”  should help, but they will have to keep up with “True Grit” ($171M), “Little Fockers” ($148), and “Tron Legacy” ($172M).

On paper, this year’s closers might look more formidable, but who knows anymore? No one predicted the bottom falling out of the sequels to “Valentine’s Day” and “Happy Feet.”

Here are the numbers:

1. New Year’s Eve: $13.7M — This is director Garry Marshall’s sequel to his “Valentine’s Day,” which opened in 2010 to a mammoth $56M. The concept seemed fool-proof: place a ton of stars around a beloved holiday and knit them together with a loosely plotted romantic comedy.

There are, however, five very good reasons “New Years Eve” flopped.

1. After his breakup with Demi Moore, women aren’t finding Ashton Kutcher all that adorable anymore, though you have to wonder what they saw in the marginally-talented metrosexual in the first place.

2. The sequel is populated with a whole lot more celebrities than stars.

3. “Valentine’s Day” wasn’t a big hit. Granted, the opening was  spectacular, but so was the subsequent drop off. In the end, it only ended up grossing $110M. Which brings me to…

4. “Valentine’s Day” was awful. Hollywood might have been able to put a dozen famous faces in the trailer to fool enough people into 3600 theatres on opening weekend, but after word got out, it crashed and became an advertisement for why no one should see the sequel.

5. Even if “New Year’s Eve” starred someone people care about like Halle Berry or Robert DeNiro, they also know from their “Valentine’s Day” experience that other than Kutcher, everyone else only shows up for a few scenes.

2. The Sitter: $10M — Jonah Hill is nothing close to a star and what made Hollywood think they could release an R-rated comedy into the middle of the Christmas season? Especially one with a trailer proud of the fact that the comedy revolves around a babysitter stripping young kids of their innocence? “Adventures in Babysitting” and “Uncle Buck” this ain’t.

3. Breaking Dawn Part 1: $7.9M — With a total haul of $260M, there’s no doubt this is a hit. However, with the closing chapter set for release next year, “Breaking Dawn” is not keeping pace with its predecessor. Summit Entertainment might be disappointed, but that’s what you call a luxury problem.

4. The Muppets: $7M — Kermit and company had enough problems without the left-wing entertainment media piling on. More about that here.

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It’s bad enough the new Jonah Hill comedy “The Sitter” is getting blasted by most movie critics. More than a few film scribes are claiming the R-rated comedy is racist to boot.

Let’s back up a moment. The film casts Hill as a slacker forced to babysit three precocious teens. Consider it “Adventures in Babysitting” with a very foul mouth.

The foursome get mixed up with an effeminate drug dealer (Sam Rockwell) as well as some thuggish black characters (including rapper Method Man). It’s here where some critics are crying foul. Consider the following comments:

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Show business is a business, right?

Is that why Hollywood made one anti-Iraq war movie after another even though they all pretty much tanked? And does that old saw explain why, in the wake of the phenomenal success of “The Passion of the Christ,” the film industry didn’t see fit to clone it?

Now, as the Occupy Wall Street movement heads into its final, sad days, Hollywood is rushing in to make a movie capturing its anti-business spirit.

If you’re scratching your heads, you’re not alone.

Lionsgate is working on a remake of the 2000 film “American Psycho,” which was based on the Bret Easton Ellis novel of the same name, an individual with knowledge of the project confirmed to TheWrap … No word on why they’re remaking a film that’s just 11 years old — presumably to poke more nasty fun at those villainous Wall Street traders.

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What are we supposed to expect from an industry that defends and honors fugitive and admitted child rapist Roman Polanski?

If you can’t bring yourself to condemn someone who drugged and anally raped a 13 year-old girl, you are part of the problem.

Moreover, if you want to know how Hollywood feels about sex with children, you can start by watching their films.

Fox News:

If a spate of recent allegations proves true, Hollywood may have a hideous epidemic on its hands. The past two weeks have brought three separate reports of alleged child sexual abuse in the entertainment industry.

Martin Weiss, a 47-year-old Hollywood manager who represented child actors, was charged in Los Angeles on Dec. 1 with sexually abusing a former client. His accuser, who was under 12 years old during the time of the alleged abuse, reported to authorities that Weiss told him “what they were doing was common practice in the entertainment industry.” Weiss has pleaded not guilty.

On Nov. 21, Fernando Rivas, 59, an award-winning composer for “Sesame Street,” was arraigned on charges of coercing a child “to engage in sexually explicit conduct” in South Carolina. The Juilliard-trained composer was also charged with production and distribution of child pornography.

Registered sex offender Jason James Murphy, 35, worked as a casting agent in Hollywood for years before his past kidnapping and sexual abuse of a boy was revealed by the Los Angeles Times on Nov. 17. Murphy’s credits include placing young actors in kid-friendly fare like “Bad News Bears,” “The School of Rock,” “Cheaper by the Dozen 2” and the forthcoming “Three Stooges.”

Revelations of this sort come as no surprise to former child star Corey Feldman.

Feldman, 40, himself a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, unflinchingly warned of the world of pedophiles who are drawn to the entertainment industry last August. “I can tell you that the No. 1 problem in Hollywood was and is and always will be pedophilia,” Feldman told ABC’s Nightline. “That’s the biggest problem for children in this industry… It’s the big secret.”

Another child star from an earlier era agrees that Hollywood has long had a problem with pedophilia. “When I watched that interview, a whole series of names and faces from my history went zooming through my head,” Paul Peterson, 66, star of The Donna Reed Show, a sitcom popular in the 1950s and 60s, and president of A Minor Consideration, tells FOXNews.com. “Some of these people, who I know very well, are still in the game.”

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Perhaps the only place you’re guaranteed to see a squeaky clean concert these days is during the Super Bowl halftime show.

The fallout from Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” back in 2004 ensured subsequent acts were chosen for their family-friendly appeal. That meant older, less threatening rockers like U2, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty got the call, while Lady Gaga was left to watch the game at home on her big screen TV.

That, inexplicably enough, leads us to Madonna. The Material Girl will be performing at the Super Bowl halftime show Feb. 5 along with Cirque du Soleil.

Madonna has come a long way, baby.

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The press and the public may be over Occupy Wall Street, but don’t tell that to a gaggle of musicians eager to piggyback on the dying movement.

It’s not hard to see why. You get to connect with disaffected teens who long to fight The Man, plus it’s an easy way to snare some street cred without taking a bullet or embracing a drug habit.

The OWS types may have rejected Miley Cyrus’ attempt to hop on the hygienically challenged bandwagon, but so far it seems like other singers are more than welcome to lend their pipes to the cause.

Among the OWS-related projects coming our way:

• “Occupy This Album” – This compilation disk feature Yo La Tengo, Devo, Lucinda Williams, Ladytron and the dulcet sounds of Michael Moore. Yes, that Michael Moore.
• Massive Attack has launched Occupy Radio on Soundcloud featuring OWS-inspired mixes from such luminaries as ex-DFA member Tim Goldsworthy and Horse Meat Disco.
• A Big Apple-based benefit album is in the works featuring TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone, former Liturgy drummer/current Guardian Alien member Greg Fox, and Oneida’s Kid Millions.

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Actor Robert Davi returned to his first love – music – this year with the celebrated disk “Davi Sings Sinatra: On the Road to Romance.”

Now, the star of “Die Hard” and “License to Kill” is using his pipes for a very good cause.

Davi’s newest song, a re-imagined version of the Christmas classic song, “Mistletoe and Holly,” will soon be available via iTunes and Amazon.com. All the profits from the song, which goes on sale Dec. 13 for $.99, will go to help The Salvation Army’s Red Kettle Campaign. The annual drive provides emergency assistance to millions of families in need around the holiday.

“Music has always been a big part of The Salvation Army, especially at Christmas, so partnering with a singer like Robert Davi is a great and natural fit,” said Major George Hood, national community relations and development secretary for The Salvation Army.

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File this in the “it’s too crazy to make up” department. Turns out Mad Cow Disease might change the way we hear classical music.

A new report reveals that the regulations overseeing the use of certain animal tissue – like beef gut – could force musical instrument companies to rely on different materials to create violin and cello strings.

Regulations which tightly control the use of certain types of animal tissue are unwittingly threatening the centuries-old technique of making musical instrument strings out of beef gut.

The craft is covered by the same strict controls on raw materials from cows, even though campaigners say that to catch Creutzfeldt – Jakob disease, (CJD) – the human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy – from violin or cello strings from an infected animal you would need to eat several metres of them.

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