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“Other Mommy,” a horror movie starring Jessica Chastain as a double-jointed doppelgänger from hell, scared up $27.5 million in its box office debut. Those ticket sales were enough to lead in North America over this
weekend’s other new release, “The Social Reckoning,” which crumbled in fifth place with $5.5 million.
“Other Mommy” landed above expectations despite being one of the worst-reviewed movies of the year. Universal and Blumhouse’s campy thriller, about a sinister paranormal entity who takes on the appearance of a young girl’s mother, was saddled with a 19% on Rotten Tomatoes and tragic “D+” grade on CinemaScore exit polls. (Even last weekend’s bomb “Digger” earned a “C+” grade on exit polls.) Those marks don’t bode well for box office longevity, though “Other Mommy” is well-positioned financially against a modest $18 million budget. The movie collected $17.69 million at the international box office, bringing its global tally to $45.19 million.
“Horror movies are generally immune to a negative reception, but this is extreme,” says analyst David A. Gross, who publishes the box office newsletter FranchiseRe. “Business is going to drop sharply.”
“The Social Reckoning,” too, will have to combat poor word-of-mouth in the coming weeks. That’s a problem because Sony’s Facebook drama didn’t incentivize crowds in the first place. The R-rated movie, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, was projected to open to $7 million to $8 million. Even those returns wouldn’t have come close to 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 tepid “B-” grade on CinemaScore. The movie, picking up years after the first, follows a Facebook engineer (Mikey Madison) who leaks thousands of internal documents to a reporter (Jeremy Allen White) to blow the whistle on the company’s dark practices. Ticket buyers were mostly older males, a demographic that’s been slow to return to theaters since the pandemic.
Comparisons between the two films were always going to be tough 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 earning $224 million globally and won four Oscars (including one for Sorkin’s screenplay). Because of the first film’s pedigree, and the fact that Fincher and Eisenberg didn’t return for the second, Sony tried to distance the associationbetween the movies and called the follow-up a “companion piece” rather than a sequel. That’s also likely why the studio economized on the budget; “The Social Reckoning” carries a $30 million price tag while “The Social Network” cost $40 million.
“The production cost was reasonable,” says Gross. “But it’s still a lot of money to recoup at these box office levels.”
Meanwhile, “Digger” cratered in its second weekend with $2.9 million from 3,321 theaters, a 64% decline from its dismal $8 million debut. So far, the Tom Cruise satire has limped to $14 million domestically and $30 million globally. Warner Bros. spent above $160 million to produce the film, which is shaping up to be one of the biggest bombs ever, with losses that could top $200 million theatrically. Given the scale of the disaster, Hollywood stars have been coming to the defense of “Digger,” with bold-faced names like Anne Hathaway, Jane Fonda, Guillermo del Toro and Mandy Patinkin praising the film and encouraging audiences to go to theaters.
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 box office charts.
Second place went to “Verity” with $11.4 million from 3,572 theaters, a harsh 64% decline from its opening weekend. The psychological thriller, starring Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson, will wind up as a win for Amazon MGM, having grossed $53 million in North America and more than $80 million worldwide to date against a $40 million budget.
“Resident Evil” dropped to second place with $8.3 million in its fourth weekend. So far, the R-rated video game remake has generated a strong $138.5 million domestically and more than $260 million globally against a $75 million budget.
“Heart of the Beast,” a survival thriller about a man who survives a plane crash with his dog, was No. 4 with $7.1 million from 3,365 theaters in its third frame. The film has earned $49.6 million in North America and $131.3 million worldwide. It will need to keep chugging along in theaters to justify its $82 million production budget.
More to come…
