Not even her vaunted ice pick could save Sharon Stone from the Ice Age onslaught.

Ice Age: The Meltdown put the deep freeze on the multiplex competition by sweeping up a truly mammoth $70.5 million over the weekend.

That left slim pickings for the three other movies entering wide release, with none faring as badly as Basic Instinct 2, which managed to vamp up just $3.2 million from Friday to Sunday, according to preliminary studio figures, putting the long-in-the-works sequel in a virtual tie for tenth place with the decidedly unsexy Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector.

Despite some lukewarm reviews, Meltdown pulled in 51.7 per cent of the audience buying tickets at the North American theaters. Flowing into 3,964 locations, the cool cartoon — featuring the voices of Ray Romano, Denis Leary and John Leguizamo as the oddball trio of prehistoric beasties Manny, Diego and Sid, along with the return of the acorn-addicted squirrel Scrat and a new mammoth babe (Queen Latifah) — averaged a whopping $17,785 per screen.

The original Ice Age, which debuted in March 2002 with a then month record $46.3 million, grossed $176.3 million domestically before a lucrative DVD release.