Other Mommy Leads Box Office While The Social Reckoning Struggles

Other Mommy Leads Box Office While The Social Reckoning Struggles

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Universal Pictures horror release Other Mommy led the North American box office with an estimated $28 million opening weekend, outperforming Sony’s struggling corporate drama The Social Reckoning as audiences headed to theaters ahead of Halloween.

Fall’s box office race took a supernatural turn as Universal Pictures and Blumhouse-Atomic Monster launched Other Mommy across 3,365 North American theaters, capturing the top spot with a projected $28 million gross by Sunday.

Jessica Chastain Leads the Cast as Jump Scares Fuel Division

The film stars Jessica Chastain in a dual role as Ursula, a working mother, alongside her monstrous supernatural double, whom her eight-year-old daughter Bela (played by Arabella Olivia Clark) calls Other Mommy. The cast also features Jay Duplass as Ursula’s husband Russell, alongside Dichen Lachman, Karen Allen, Arian Moayed, and Sean Kaufman. Much of the pre-release momentum stemmed from a viral trailer that played extensively ahead of summer releases like The Odyssey.

Director Rob Savage drew attention by boasting that the feature includes approximately 50 jump scares, averaging out to about one every two minutes. That focus on startles divided reviewers. Some critics found the constant barrage exhausting, while others pointed out that the picture leans on familiar haunted-house tropes and domestic anxieties surrounding careerism and motherhood. In his review for The Hollywood Reporter, critic Richard Lawson deemed the movie an attractive but mostly vacuous collection of jumpy bits and half-baked mythology.

“they left the theater. The trailer — a second, even scarier version has since been released — only shows a sliver of the scares audiences can expect in Other Mommy, director Rob Savage told Empire magazine. In fact, he estimates that there are around 50 in the movie. They’re harder to make work than you might think, says Savage.”

Rob Savage, Director

Despite commercial traction out of the gate, audience reception signaled a divide between ticket buyers and the box office tally. Other Mommy pulled in a D+ CinemaScore from audiences—the lowest grade for a wide release since Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis in September 2024—alongside a PostTrak score of 47 percent in the top two boxes and a 33 percent definite recommend rating.

Sony Struggles as The Social Reckoning Debuts

While Universal’s horror vehicle commanded the multiplexes, Sony Pictures experienced a softer debut for its corporate drama The Social Reckoning. Directed by Aaron Sorkin as a companion piece to his Academy Award-winning 2010 film The Social Network, the new feature opened in fourth place behind holdovers. The film grossed $2.15 million on Friday, including Thursday previews from 2,368 locations, on its way to an estimated $6 million three-day weekend.

Other Mommy Leads Box Office While The Social Reckoning Struggles
Photo: Yahoo

The Social Reckoning follows the 2021 Facebook leak by whistleblower Frances Haugen, played by Mikey Madison. Jeremy Strong stars as Mark Zuckerberg, taking over the role from Jesse Eisenberg, while Jeremy Allen White portrays Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz. The film opened with mixed notices from reviewers, holding a 54 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 71 percent audience score.

Verity and Resident Evil Retain Strong Audiences

Other weekend holdovers continued to draw crowds. Amazon MGM Studios’ psycho-thriller Verity, adapted from Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel and starring Anne Hathaway, Josh Hartnett, and Dakota Johnson, added $4 million on Friday in its second week across 3,572 screens. The film is tracking toward a $14.2 million weekend, bringing its total domestic cume to roughly $56.6 million.

Meanwhile, Sony’s video game adaptation Resident Evil pulled in $2.32 million on Friday in its fourth weekend across 3,085 screens, eyeing an $8.2 million weekend that will push its domestic gross past $138.3 million. Paramount Pictures’ survival adventure The Heart of the Beast, starring Brad Pitt as a veteran in the Alaskan wilderness with a combat dog, added $1.96 million on Friday toward an expected $6.7 million weekend, bringing its running total near $49.3 million, according to reporting by Variety.

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