'New Year's Eve' leads slow box office sales

LOS ANGELES: Holiday romance "New Year's Eve" led North American box office charts over the weekend, although sales were sluggish, industry estimates showed Sunday.

The star-studded romantic comedy featuring Michelle Pfeiffer and Zac Efron, with appearances by Robert de Niro and Halle Barry, scored $13.7 million for its opening weekend, according to Exhibitor Relations.

That pushed it ahead of adult comedy "The Sitter," with Jonah Hill starring as a reluctant babysitter. Also showing in theaters for the first time this week, it raked in $10 million.

Blockbuster vampire heart-throb flick "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 1," came in third after three weeks at the top of box office. It rang up $7.9 million, pushing it past the quarter-billion-dollar mark for a total of $259.5 million so far.

That put the teen vampire sequel ahead of "The Muppets," the new film based on Jim Henson's puppet characters, which grossed $7.1 million for its third week in theaters.

In fifth place was animated family comedy "Arthur Christmas," about Santa's son tasked with completing a mission by Christmas morning. It pulled in $6.6 million.

Martin Scorsese's first 3-D film "Hugo" came in sixth place. The adventure drama based on Brian Selznick's novel "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" about a boy who lives alone in a Paris railway station raked in $6.1 million.

In seventh was George Clooney comedy-drama "The Descendants," with $4.4 million, enough to push it ahead of penguin tale "Happy Feet Two," which got $3.8 million.

Adam Sandler's "Jack and Jill" comedy, in which he plays both a successful Los Angeles advertising executive and his needy twin sister, came in ninth. It got $3.2 million.

Big-budget 3-D epic "Immortals" rounded out the top 10, with $2.4 million.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011