Audiences Graded Other Mommy a D-Plus and Made It No. 1 Anyway. They Liked The Social Reckoning More and Stayed Home.

The weekend box office handed out two report cards that seem to contradict each other. Other Mommy, Universal's Jessica Chastain horror movie, opened at No. 1 with $27.5 million from 3,365 theaters, well past forecasts of about $20 million. It did that with a D+ from CinemaScore, which surveys audiences on opening night.

The Social Reckoning, Aaron Sorkin's follow-up to The Social Network, earned a B-minus from the people who saw it. Not many did: $5.5 million from 2,606 theaters, good for fifth place behind three holdovers. (These are Sunday studio estimates, so the final numbers can move slightly.)

How a D-plus movie wins a weekend

Because CinemaScore polls opening-night crowds, its grade mostly measures whether a movie delivered what people walked in expecting. Horror takes the hardest hits when a trailer sells one movie and the theater shows another. Hereditary drew the same D+ in 2018, opened to $13.6 million, and finished with about $81 million worldwide. It is now a modern horror landmark.

The difference is that critics loved Hereditary. Other Mommy has no such defense. It sits at 17 percent on Rotten Tomatoes with an audience score of 48 percent, so for once the critics and the paying customers agree. The New York Times called it a "sometimes-creepy, sometimes-hilarious schlockfest."

None of that hurts the math. Blumhouse and James Wan's Atomic Monster made it for about $19 million, and it took in $45.2 million worldwide after opening in 50 overseas markets at the same time. According to the AP, the crowd split evenly by gender and was about two-thirds 18 to 34. "It wasn't just one particular demographic," said Jim Orr, Universal's head of domestic distribution.

The grade matters next weekend. Verity just showed the pattern: it opened at No. 1 with $32.6 million and a C-plus CinemaScore, then fell 64 percent to $11.5 million this weekend. Other Mommy earned a worse grade and faces two new genre openings on Friday. Wan's better-loved haunted houses are in our Conjuring movies ranked.

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Sorkin got a quarter of The Social Network

Sixteen years ago, The Social Network opened at No. 1 with $22.4 million, grossed about $224 million worldwide, and won three Oscars, including Sorkin's for adapted screenplay. The follow-up opened to roughly a quarter of that, before adjusting for inflation, at an average of $2,111 per theater. That is, almost to the dollar, what Heart of the Beast averaged in its third weekend.

The strange part is that the people who went mostly liked it. The B-minus is a step down from the original's B+, but its Rotten Tomatoes audience score is 73 percent, well above the 55 percent critics gave it. Word of mouth was never the problem. Getting people to buy a ticket was. The critics' consensus calls it "an urgent warning that feels like it's arriving a little too late," and that may describe the marketing challenge too: Frances Haugen's Facebook disclosures were news in 2021.

"These movies that are topical in nature, sometimes they resonate with the culture, sometimes they don't," Paul Dergarabedian, Rentrak's head of marketplace trends, told the AP. The film cost around $30 million before marketing, per the AP, with some reports putting it closer to $40 million, and it has made about $9 million worldwide so far. If you read our guide to what to expect, the split early reactions held up.

Two prestige swings, two weekends in a row

It is the second straight weekend an adult drama from a major filmmaker came up short. Digger, Alejandro G. Iñárritu's Tom Cruise satire, opened to $8 million on a reported $125 million budget, then fell 60 percent to $3.2 million. After ten days it has $14.4 million. Both films arrived as possible Oscar contenders. Neither opening helps the case.

The numbers worth a second look

• The Odyssey went up. Christopher Nolan's epic rose 54 percent in its 13th weekend after returning to select IMAX and 70mm screens on Friday, a week after IMAX handed those screens to Digger. It made $2 million from 560 theaters and sits just shy of $623 million domestic. See where it lands in our Christopher Nolan movies ranked.
• Fjord had the best average in the country. Cristian Mungiu's Palme d'Or winner made $124,000 on four screens, $31,000 each, nearly four times the $8,172 Other Mommy averaged.
• Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother grew. Mahershala Ali's hitman drama, our top pick last weekend, rose 37 percent to $310,430 in 34 theaters before it opens everywhere on Friday.
• Pan's Labyrinth came back. Guillermo del Toro's 2006 fairy tale made $1.66 million in its 20th-anniversary re-release from more than 1,100 theaters, good for 11th place.

The bigger picture is healthy. The year's domestic box office passed $8 billion on Friday, more than 19 percent ahead of last year, per Rentrak.

What to watch for this Friday

October 16 is the busiest weekend of the month. Street Fighter is the likeliest new No. 1. Boxoffice Pro's long-range forecast had it at $30 million to $40 million, though some presale trackers now see something closer to $20 million. Whether it belongs among the best-reviewed video game movies is still an open question.

Whalefall, Brian Duffield's survival thriller about a diver swallowed by a sperm whale, has strong first reactions, especially for Austin Abrams, with full reviews expected Wednesday. Sense and Sensibility and the wide release of Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother fill out the weekend. The full week-by-week slate is in our October theaters guide.

Saw either one? Add it to Shortlist and rank it head to head against the movies you already love. That beats a letter grade, because it tells you whether The Social Reckoning really sits below The Social Network for you, and by how much. Our movie tier list guide shows how.

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