'Sherlock Holmes' Maintains Lead Over Rival Squeakquel

Your weekend box office:

1. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows - $40 million--enough to secure the top spot but still $22 million less than the original's opening weekend. I guess everyone's already getting tired of associating one of fiction's greatest detectives with the word "bromance." Time to pack it in, everyone.

2. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked - $23.5 million--less than half the opening take of Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, leaving the studio wondering, "When the fuck did everyone get so damn discerning about punning sequel titles?"

3. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol - $13 million. It's a deceptive third-place opening, as the film only opened in 425 theaters, meaning its per-screen average was nearly triple that of Sherlock Holmes. But also those theaters it opened in were all IMAX, meaning the ticket prices were inherently much higher, so in the end I think we've all already stopped caring, right?

4. New Year's Eve - $7.4 million. Expect this number to rise somewhat as we draw closer to the titular holiday and the end of the world approaches.

5. The Sitter - $4.4 million, just barely holding on over Twilight's estimated $4.3 million weekend. The forces of overweight Jonah Hill have triumphed over the undead yet again.

Weekend Box Office Results [Box Office Mojo]