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The Social Reckoning, Sony’s drama about the early days of Facebook, stumbled at the box office with an opening weekend of about 6 million dollars.
The film, written by Aaron Sorkin as a follow-up to The Social Network, earned about 2.1 million dollars on Friday, a soft start that fell well short of expectations.
According to box-office reports, the weekend was instead won by the horror entry Other Mommy, which opened to about 28 million dollars.
The slow start raises questions about audience appetite for Silicon Valley dramas more than a decade after the original film became a cultural touchstone.
Sony will be hoping word of mouth can steady the film’s run, though history suggests such openings rarely turn around.
The contrast with the 2010 original could hardly be sharper. The Social Network opened to strong numbers, won Oscars and became the defining film of the Facebook era. Its successor arrives in a world where the company’s controversies are old news and its founder long since recast as a metaverse evangelist.
Compounding the challenge, the film faced a crowded marketplace and a horror breakout that swallowed the cultural conversation. Other Mommy’s 28-million-dollar debut left little oxygen for anything else.
For Sony, the silver lining may be prestige rather than profit: Sorkin’s script has drawn respectful reviews, and awards season could yet give the film a second life.
Industry analysts note that adult dramas have struggled theatrically for years, with most finding their audiences on streaming. A 6-million-dollar opening, in that context, is less a shock than a confirmation of where the market has moved.
Whether The Social Reckoning finds redemption on demand remains to be seen. The original film’s reputation grew over time; its successor will need a similar slow burn to escape the shadow of its opening weekend.
Until then, the film stands as a reminder that even the most pedigreed projects can misfire at the box office — and that in today’s Hollywood, the opening weekend is only the first chapter of a much longer story.
