Projections put Universal and Blumhouse's Other Mommy on pace with The Black Phone while Sony's Social Reckoning looks set to open more than 50 percent below The Social Network.
Two very different films are fighting for attention at the multiplex this weekend, and the numbers already tell you which one audiences want to see.
Universal and Blumhouse-Atomic Monster's Other Mommy, with Jessica Chastain playing both a worried mother and the vicious doppelganger stalking her daughter, is tracking for a domestic opening around $24 million according to TheWrap. That would land it right alongside the $23.6 million start of The Black Phone back in 2022. Some theatrical sources think it could climb closer to $30 million if reviews or early buzz hold up.
The trailers running ahead of Resident Evil and The Odyssey have done the heavy lifting here, showing Chastain as a supernatural threat chasing a little girl through dark hallways and, memorably, a ball pit. That's been enough to get horror fans talking in the same register they did for Ethan Hawke's turn in The Black Phone.
For Blumhouse, this matters more than one weekend's gross. The studio has ridden franchise sequels, Black Phone, Five Nights at Freddy's, Insidious, and basked in its EP credit on Obsession and its ties to Backrooms. But original high-concept horror has been a soft spot since 2024. Wolf Man, Drop and The Woman in the Yard kept budgets low enough to avoid being called flops, but none of them built the kind of franchise momentum The Black Phone did. Other Mommy is the title meant to prove the studio can still do that from scratch.
A harder road for Social Reckoning
Sony, Columbia and Alcon's The Social Reckoning is not having that kind of weekend. Current tracking puts it near an $8 million opening from roughly 2,500 locations, per TheWrap, which would mirror last weekend's bomb Digger. Compare that to The Social Network's $22.4 million opening from 2,776 screens back in October 2010, and this follow-up is on pace to debut more than 50 percent below its predecessor.
The film revisits The Wall Street Journal's 2021 reporting on leaked internal Meta documents, taking a sharper, angrier look at Mark Zuckerberg than Aaron Sorkin's original did. The subject matter doesn't seem to be the draw it once was. As Digger already showed this season, films that lean directly into politics and the current moment are having a rough time finding audiences in theatres right now.
The Social Reckoning reportedly carries a net budget around $40 million, split between Sony and Alcon, and Sony has enough cushion from Spider-Man: Brand New Day's summer haul to absorb a quiet run. But if the film exits the box office as fast as projected, it says something about how far audience appetite has shifted for sober, issue-driven dramas without some other hook attached.
Both films open against a theatrical calendar heading into a thinner October stretch, with Resident Evil still holding and Clayface waiting in the wings as Halloween closes in. Whether Other Mommy has the legs to match The Black Phone's eventual $90 million domestic run is the real question once this weekend's numbers are in.
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