“Other Mommy,” a horror film starring Jessica Chastain as a double-jointed doppelgänger from Hell, grossed $27.5 million in its box office debut. Those ticket sales were enough to dominate this weekend’s other new release in North America, “The Social Reckoning,” which collapsed to fifth place with $5.5 million.
“Other Mommy” exceeded expectations despite being one of the lowest-rated films of the year. Universal and Blumhouse’s country thriller, about a sinister paranormal entity that takes the form of a young girl’s mother, struggled with a 19% on Rotten Tomatoes and a tragic “D+” rating in CinemaScore exit polls. (Even last weekend’s bomb, “Digger,” managed to earn a “C+” rating in exit polls.) Those ratings don’t bode well for box office longevity, even if “Other Mommy” is in a good place financially with a modest $18 million budget. The film raked in $17.69 million at the international box office, bringing its worldwide total to $45.19 million.
“Horror films are generally immune to negative reception, but this one is extreme,” says analyst David A. Gross, who publishes the FranchiseRe box office newsletter. “Business will drop sharply. »
“The Social Reckoning” will also have to combat bad word of mouth in the coming weeks. This is a problem because Sony’s Facebook drama didn’t encourage crowds in the first place. The R-rated film, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, was expected to gross between $7 million and $8 million. Even those returns wouldn’t have compared to those of 2010’s “The Social Network,” which opened almost exactly 16 years ago to $22 million, not adjusted for inflation. Critics and audiences were mixed on “The Social Reckoning,” which holds a 54% on Rotten Tomatoes and a lukewarm “B-” grade on CinemaScore. The film, which picks up years after the first, follows a Facebook engineer (Mikey Madison) who leaks thousands of internal documents to a journalist (Jeremy Allen White) to expose the company’s dark practices. Ticket buyers were mostly older men, a demographic that has been slow to return to theaters since the pandemic.
Comparisons between the two films were always going to be difficult because “The Social Network” is widely considered one of the best films of the 2010s. That film, directed by David Fincher, written by Sorkin and starring Jessie Eisenberg as Zuckerberg, ended up grossing $224 million worldwide and winning four Academy Awards (including one for Sorkin’s screenplay). Due to the pedigree of the first film and the fact that Fincher and Eisenberg did not return for the second, Sony attempted to distance the association between the films and labeled the follow-up a “companion piece” rather than a sequel. This is probably also why the studio saved its budget; “The Social Reckoning” cost $30 million while “The Social Network” cost $40 million.
“Stories about corporate intrigue, money and power have found their way to television. They lack the cinematic qualities that excite audiences on the big screen,” says Gross. “The production cost was reasonable. But it’s still a lot of money to make back at these box office levels.”
Meanwhile, “Digger” exploded in its second weekend with $3.2 million from 3,321 theaters, a 60% drop from its dismal $8 million debut. So far, the Tom Cruise satire has grossed $14 million domestically and $35.3 million globally. Warner Bros. spent more than $160 million to produce the film, which is shaping up to be one of the biggest bombs of all time, with losses that could exceed $200 million in theaters. Faced with the scale of the disaster, Hollywood stars came to the defense of “Digger,” with bold names like Anne Hathaway, Jane Fonda, Guillermo del Toro and Mandy Patinkin praising the film and encouraging audiences to go to the movies. (Spoiler alert: it didn’t work.)
Elsewhere, holdovers including Amazon MGM’s Colleen Hoover adaptation “Verity,” Sony’s “Resident Evil” reboot and Paramount’s Brad Pitt-led “Heart of the Beast” rounded out the box office charts.
Second place went to “Verity” with $11.4 million from 3,572 theaters, a steep 64% decline from its opening weekend. The psychological thriller, starring Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson, is a win for Amazon MGM, having grossed $53 million in North America and $113 million worldwide to date, against a budget of $40 million.
“Resident Evil” fell to second place with $8.3 million in its fourth weekend. So far, the R-rated video game remake has grossed $138.5 million domestically and $300 million globally, against a budget of $75 million. This film and “Spider-Man: Brand New Day”, which is now the third highest-grossing film in history, will cushion the losses Sony will face in “The Social Reckoning”.
“Heart of the Beast,” a wild thriller about a man who survives a plane crash with his dog, ranked No. 4 with $7.1 million from 3,365 theaters in its third installment. The film grossed $49.6 million in North America and $131.3 million worldwide. It remains stable but will have to continue to advance in theaters to justify its production budget of 82 million dollars.
Chris Rock’s Misty Green, Alex Gibney’s in-depth Elon Musk documentary Musk and Palme d’Or winner Neon Fjord were among the new releases at the specialty box office. The commercial appeal of the three films, which hope to be in the Oscar race, will be tested when they are released nationally in the coming weeks.
“Fjord,” a legal thriller about parents (Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve) suspected of child abuse, had the best start with $124,000 from just four theaters in New York and Los Angeles, or $31,000 per location.
A24’s “Misty Green,” a showbiz drama about an actress (Rosalind Eleazar) fighting for her second act in Hollywood, collected $85,716 from six screens over the weekend — or $14,286 per location — and $98,720 in its first four days in theaters.
Bleecker Street’s “Musk,” an incisive look at the world’s richest man, generated $68,900 at four sites, or a per-screen average of $17,225, over the weekend. These returns are remarkable given that “Musk” is nearly four hours long (and has an intermission!), which limits each theater’s daily schedule.
So far, October has been sluggish after a better-than-expected September at the box office. Revenue for the month is 23% ahead of the same point in 2025, which turned out to be the lowest October in three decades, and 8% behind 2019, the last year before COVID upended the box office. So, upcoming releases like Paramount’s video game adaptation “Street Fighter,” Disney’s survival thriller “Whalefall” and Warner Bros.’ comic book-inspired “Clayface.” and DC are hoping to save the spookiest month of the year.
Gn entert
