Sharon Stone with co-star David Morrissey at the promotion of Basic Instinct 2.

Stone in the first Basic Instinct.

Los Angeles, April 3: The original broke new ground with the risqu? shot that made a star of Sharon Stone. Its long-awaited sequel, however, is likely to be remembered only for failing to deliver anything approaching so memorable a moment.

Basic Instinct 2, the follow-up to the 1992 blockbuster starring Michael Douglas as a San Francisco policeman who falls for Stone’s murderous femme fatale, opened at the weekend to paltry box office sales and a critical mauling.

According to preliminary figures, it made only $1.15 million on its opening night and was expected to total just over $3 million by the end of the weekend.

By contrast, the animated feature Ice Age: The Meltdown ? also a sequel ? made an estimated $22 million on its opening night and was expected to take more than $70 million by last night.

Fans of the original Basic Instinct, directed by Paul Verhoeven, have waited 14 years for the follow-up to the erotic thriller in which Stone played the smouldering, icy crime writer who is a suspect in a series of vicious sex murders.

Its iconic interrogation scene ? where an underwear-less Stone demonstrates her sexual power to police officers with a swift uncrossing of the legs ? became one of the most talked-about peep show moments in cine- matic history.

The film went on to gross $350 million.

Trailers for the new film, directed by Michael Caton-Jones, feature lots of teasing footage of Stone ? now 48 ? but, as many critics waste no time in pointing out, there is no repeat of the revealing shot.

The Washington Post calls the film “a hammy plot with a pickle on the side”.

Writing in the New York Times, Manohla Dargis dubbed it “a disaster of the highest or perhaps lowest order”.

The film, also starring Charlotte Rampling, David Thewlis and Liverpool-born David Morrissey, is set in what the CBS News critic David Edelstein calls “a drab London that’s, no offence to English people, really un-erotic”.