Social Calculation Box Office: the sequel aims for $7 million, another mother at the helm

The spooky box office season kicks off with two very different villains: an autocratic tech bro and a double-jointed doppelganger from hell.

This weekend’s new releases, Sony’s “The Social Reckoning,” featuring Jeremy Strong’s chilly take on Mark Zuckerberg, and “Other Mommy,” starring Jessica Chastain as a mother threatened by her creepy twin, hope to boost movie theater attendance after Tom Cruise’s “Digger” failed to attract older crowds. Fortunately for exhibitors, it won’t take much for these films and other upcoming releases, including Paramount’s video game adaptation “Street Fighter,” Disney’s survival thriller “Whalefall” and Warner Bros. comic book-inspired “Clayface,” to be released. and DC, improve on last year’s disastrous October at the box office.

“The Social Reckoning,” written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, is aiming for a $7 million to $8 million debut in North America. Those projections lag considerably 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, grossed $224 million worldwide, won four Academy Awards, including one for Sorkin’s screenplay, and is widely considered one of the best films of the 2010s. Perhaps because of this pedigree and the fact that Fincher and Eisenberg chose not to return, Sony attempted to distance the association between the two films by calling the second of “accompanying piece” rather than sequel. Another challenge is that adult drama series have struggled to attract crowds in the post-Covid years. Since Sony spent a modest $30 million to produce “The Social Reckoning,” it wouldn’t be a disaster if this film didn’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 dark realities of the company. Reviews have been mixed, with Variety Critic Guy Lodge writing the 2021 ‘Facebook Files’ leak procedural drama already “seems late” despite being “quite diverting, quite clever and quite true”.

“Other Mommy” will rule the box office charts with $20 million or more from 3,200 North American theaters. That’s a good start considering the film 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 the appearance of a young girl’s mother and begins haunting their home.

Among the fallout, last weekend’s champ, “Verity,” could decline 50 to 60 percent from its debut, bringing ticket sales to around $13 million to $16 million. Amazon MGM’s adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s best-selling book, a psychological thriller starring Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson, has so far grossed $34 million domestically and $65 million worldwide, against a budget of $40 million.

“Digger” is looking to add $4 million in its second weekend, a 50% drop from its terrible $8 million debut. The black comedy from Warner Bros. has generated $8.7 million worldwide and $20 million worldwide to date. With a production budget exceeding $160 million, the film promises to be a historic box office bomb. Since “Digger” was DOA, Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” returns this weekend to Imax and 70mm screens. I guess the theater owners didn’t want to risk another weekend of empty Imax theaters?