Spooky season at the box office is kicking off with two very different villains: an autocratic tech bro and a double-jointed doppelgänger from hell.
This weekend’s new releases, Sony’s “The Social Reckoning,” featuring Jeremy Strong’s frigid take on Mark Zuckerberg, and “Other Mommy,” starring Jessica Chastain as a mother threatened by her creepy twin, are hoping to jolt movie theater attendance after Tom Cruise’s “Digger” failed to bring out older crowds. Luckily for exhibitors, it won’t take much for those films and other upcoming releases, including Paramount’s video game adaptation “Street Fighter,” Disney’s survival thriller “Whalefall” and Warner Bros. and DC’s comic book-inspired “Clayface,” to improve upon last year’s disastrous October at the box office.
“The Social Reckoning,” written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, is targeting a debut of $7 million to $8 million in North America. Those projections are dramatically behind the studio’s first Facebook drama, 2010’s “The Social Network,” which opened almost exactly 16 years ago to $22 million, not adjusted for inflation.
The original, directed by David Fincher and starring Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg, powered to $224 million globally, won four Oscars, including one for Sorkin’s screenplay, and is widely considered one of the best movies of the 2010s. Perhaps because of that pedigree, and the fact that Fincher and Eisenberg opted not to return, Sony has tried to distance the association between the two films by calling the second a “companion piece” rather than a sequel. Another challenge is the reality that adult dramas have struggled to draw crowds in post-COVID years. Since Sony spent a modest $30 million to produce “The Social Reckoning,” it won’t be a disaster if this film doesn’t live up to its predecessor in terms of ticket sales.
“The Social Reckoning” picks up years after the events of the first film and follows a Facebook engineer (Mikey Madison) who leaks thousands of internal documents to a Wall Street Journal reporter (Jeremy Allen White) to expose the company’s dark realities. Reviews have been mixed, with Variety’s critic Guy Lodge writing the procedural drama about the 2021 “Facebook Files” leak “already feels behind the curve” though it is “diverting enough, clever enough and true enough.”
“Other Mommy” will preside over box office charts with $20 million or more from 3,200 North American theaters. It’s a solid start considering the movie was made for just $18 million. Produced by James Wan and directed by Rob Savage, the campy horror film revolves around a paranormal entity who takes on the appearance of a young girl’s mother and begins haunting their home.
Among holdovers, last weekend’s champ “Verity” could decline by 50% to 60% from its debut, putting ticket sales around $13 million to $16 million. Amazon MGM’s adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestseller, a psychological thriller starring Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson, has earned $34 million domestically and $65 million worldwide so far against a $40 million budget.
“Digger” looks to add $4 million in its second weekend, a 50% drop from its terrible $8 million start. The Warner Bros. dark comedy has generated $8.7 million globally and $20 million globally to date. With a production budget above $160 million, it’s shaping up to be a historic box office bomb. Since “Digger” was D.O.A., Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” is returning to Imax and 70mm screens this weekend. Guess theater owners didn’t want to risk another weekend of empty Imax auditoriums?
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