Two films open this Friday into almost opposite weekends. Other Mommy, a horror film starring Jessica Chastain as a mother stalked by a menacing double of herself, arrives in more than 3,200 theatres tracking toward an opening of roughly $20 to $24 million, with some forecasters seeing a path past $30 million if early audience reaction runs hot, according to tracking reports.
The Social Reckoning, Aaron Sorkin’s return to the company he chronicled in The Social Network sixteen years ago, opens on about 2,500 screens tracking toward $7 or $8 million, less than half the $22.4 million its predecessor opened to in 2010 on its way to $225 million worldwide. Reviews, embargoed until two days before release, have landed warm rather than rapturous at 64 percent positive, with performances praised and the necessity of the sequel questioned.
The contrast is the market in miniature. Other Mommy is original, but it is original inside horror, the one genre where unfamiliar titles reliably open, and it carries the two most successful horror producers of the decade behind it. Their recent originals have avoided big losses on small budgets; this one could do considerably better, tracking near the $23.6 million debut of a recent genre hit that finished above $160 million worldwide.
Sorkin’s film, by contrast, is a sequel in spirit to a drama adults once made a hit through word of mouth, the exact audience segment that now defaults to waiting for streaming. A late review embargo, the kind studios impose when they prefer audiences to decide before critics do, rarely helps a film whose entire pitch is intelligence.
By Sunday night the numbers will grade both strategies. The smart money, on this week’s tracking, says fear opens and Facebook posts modestly, a sentence that would have been unthinkable when the first film made Aaron Sorkin the most imitated screenwriter in Hollywood.
Two things could still scramble the tracking: horror audiences are famously walk-up driven, deciding on Friday night rather than in advance, and adult dramas occasionally build through word of mouth when the opening crowd talks. But the structural lesson of the weekend was already visible before a ticket was sold: a $24 million horror opening is now a more reliable business than a film about the world’s most famous social network, made by its most celebrated chronicler.
US News Zone will continue to follow this story as further results are confirmed.
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