Other Mommy Tops as The Social Reckoning Bombs: 11 Box Office Takeaways From 9 to 11 October

By the Filmoria News Desk

Universal’s horror film Other Mommy, starring Jessica Chastain, opened at No. 1 in North America with an estimated $27.5 million over the weekend of 9 to 11 October 2026, despite a D+ CinemaScore. Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning, Sony’s follow-up to The Social Network, flopped with $5.5 million in fifth place. Both films opened in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday 9 October 2026, and UK weekend figures from Comscore are due early this week.

UK and Ireland Box Office: Weekend of 2 to 4 October 2026

Source: Comscore, via the Film Distributors’ Association UK and Ireland Top 15 and Screen Daily. This is the latest published UK weekend. Figures for 9 to 11 October, the opening weekend of Other Mommy and The Social Reckoning, haven’t been released yet. Deadline’s Sunday international round-up has Verity’s second UK weekend at about $2.6 million (down 41%), for roughly $9.7 million in total.

This is a ranked list of the 11 biggest takeaways from the North American box office weekend of 9 to 11 October 2026, when Other Mommy opened at No. 1 and The Social Reckoning flopped.

The takeaways are ordered by how much each one tells us about the business: the winner and its numbers first, then the flop, then the holdovers and the milestone, finishing with the state of the market. Every figure comes from Sunday studio estimates reported by Deadline, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, TheWrap and the Associated Press, and will shift slightly when Monday’s actuals arrive.

1. Other Mommy Opens at No. 1 With $27.5 Million (2026, US, Universal / Blumhouse / Atomic Monster)

What makes it stand out: A mid-budget original horror film beat its studio’s own forecast by more than a third.

Key data: $27.5 million from 3,365 cinemas, a per-cinema average of about $8,172, against Universal’s projection of around $20 million; directed by Rob Savage, starring Jessica Chastain, Jay Duplass and Arabella Olivia Clark.

Why it matters: It came from a film nobody had pegged as a breakout, and it’s the biggest start yet for its British director.

Universal went into the weekend saying $20 million. Deadline’s Thursday preview piece headlined that same number. BoxOfficeReport was more bullish at $28.5 million, and it ended up closest. The film landed on $27.5 million, which is a lot of money for a horror movie with no franchise attached and a lead actor who isn’t usually associated with the genre.

Chastain does have form here. She led Mama in 2013 and played the grown-up Beverly Marsh in It Chapter Two. But Other Mommy asks more of her, with a dual role at the centre of the marketing. The film is based on Incidents Around the House, a novel by Josh Malerman, the writer of Bird Box, and it’s produced by Blumhouse and James Wan’s Atomic Monster, the two companies that merged in 2024.

It’s also a career best for Savage. The British director came up through low-budget lockdown horror with Host in 2020, then moved into the studio system with The Boogeyman, which opened to $12.3 million in 2023. Other Mommy more than doubles that. And it’s worth remembering that Universal moved the film out of May 2026 into this October slot. That decision looks very smart now.

2. The D+ CinemaScore: Lowest Since Megalopolis

What makes it stand out: Other Mommy opened at No. 1 with an audience grade that usually signals a disaster.

Key data: D+ from CinemaScore’s opening-night poll, the lowest grade for a film since Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis in September 2024, and a 19% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Why it matters: The opening was bought by marketing and curiosity; the second weekend will show whether word of mouth sinks it.

Horror always grades low. Audiences who go to be scared are hard to please, and plenty of well-reviewed horror films come away with a C. But a D+ is a different level. It’s the kind of grade that tends to go with films people actively felt cheated by, and it lines up with the critics: 19% on Rotten Tomatoes is about as bad as a wide studio release gets.

The daily numbers show the shape you’d expect. Friday brought in $12.6 million, including $3.6 million from Thursday previews. Saturday fell to $8.95 million and Sunday to an estimated $5.95 million. That’s a weekend total only about 2.2 times Friday’s number, which is front-loaded even by horror standards. The people who wanted to see it turned up early; the people who heard about it afterwards weren’t persuaded.

So how did a film this poorly received open so big? Mostly trailers. The first one, released in July, went hard on a single creepy image of Chastain’s smile, and it did the rounds online. Dread Central compared the first poster to Smile, and it’s hard to think of a better comparison for what Universal was selling. It worked for three days. Whether it works for a fourth is a different matter.

3. The $19 Million Budget That Makes It a Win Anyway

What makes it stand out: Even if Other Mommy collapses next weekend, it’s already earned more than twice its reported production cost worldwide.

Key data: Reported budget of $18 million to $19 million (TheWrap puts the net cost nearer $30 million, with Alcon Entertainment as co-financier); worldwide gross of more than $45 million after its first weekend, per Deadline.

Why it matters: This is the Blumhouse model doing exactly what it’s designed to do: keep costs low enough that a bad grade can’t turn a hit into a loss.

The rough rule is that a film needs to make between two and two and a half times its production budget worldwide to cover marketing and the cinemas’ share. For a $19 million film, that’s somewhere around $40 million to $50 million. Other Mommy is basically there after three days, before most of its international rollout has really got going.

There’s a wrinkle. TheWrap reports a net budget of roughly $30 million, with Alcon sharing the cost, which pushes the break-even line further out. Even on that figure, though, a $45 million global start puts the film in a comfortable position. Horror sells well on premium video on demand, too, and that’s where a lot of these films make their profit anyway.

Compare that with Tom Cruise’s Digger from last weekend, which cost at least $125 million and opened to $8 million. One film got terrible reviews and will still make money; the other got mixed reviews and will lose a fortune. Budget discipline is the whole story.

4. The Social Reckoning Bombs With $5.5 Million (2026, US, Sony)

What makes it stand out: Aaron Sorkin’s return to Facebook opened below even the lowest forecast going into the weekend.

Key data: $5.5 million from 2,606 cinemas, fifth place, against Variety’s forecast of $7 million to $8 million and Deadline’s $6 million; reported production budget of about $30 million; written and directed by Sorkin, starring Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg, Mikey Madison as whistleblower Frances Haugen and Jeremy Allen White as journalist Jeff Horwitz.

Why it matters: Showbiz411 called it Sony’s biggest flop of the year, landing in the same year as the studio’s record-breaking Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

On paper, this had a lot going for it. A sequel of sorts to one of the most admired films of the 2010s, from the writer who won an Oscar for it. An Oscar-winning lead in Mikey Madison, fresh off Anora. Jeremy Strong, who’s become one of the most talked-about actors working, playing the most famous tech founder alive. And a true story, the Wall Street Journal’s 2021 “Facebook Files” investigation, that most adults half remember.

None of it translated into ticket sales. By Saturday, Showbiz411 was reporting that Sony itself expected about $6 million, and the final estimate came in under that. Deadline’s headline summed it up in one word: “Ghosted.”

The theories for why are already flying. IndieWire ran a whole piece asking what went wrong. The most convincing explanation is the simplest one. The Social Network was about the founding of something new and exciting in 2010. In 2026, a film about Facebook’s harms is a film about a subject people already feel tired of, and that’s a tough sell for a Friday night out.

5. Less Than a Third of The Social Network’s Opening (2010 vs 2026)

What makes it stand out: The follow-up opened at roughly a quarter of what the original took 16 years ago, before you even adjust for inflation.

Key data: The Social Network opened to $22.4 million in October 2010 and went on to about $97 million domestic and about $225 million worldwide on a $40 million budget; The Social Reckoning opened to $5.5 million on about $30 million.

Why it matters: Adult-skewing prestige dramas used to open in the $20 million range on a regular basis, and the comparison shows how far that market has shrunk.

TheWrap made the point bluntly: the new film’s debut is less than a third of what its Oscar-winning predecessor earned in the autumn of 2010, and that’s without adjusting for ticket prices. Do adjust, and the gap gets wider.

It’s easy to forget how ordinary a $22 million opening for an adult drama was back then. The Social Network topped the chart that weekend, played for months and became a cultural reference point. It also had David Fincher directing. Sorkin is directing his own script this time, as he did on Molly’s Game, The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Being the Ricardos. Of those, only Molly’s Game had a proper wide theatrical run, and it never opened anywhere near $20 million either.

Sony did trim the budget, from about $40 million on the original to roughly $30 million here. That helps, but not enough. At $5.5 million, this one probably won’t get to $20 million domestic, let alone its budget.

6. A B- Grade, a $3.5 Million Overseas Start and About $9 Million Worldwide

What makes it stand out: Audiences actually liked The Social Reckoning more than critics did, which makes the flop harder to explain away.

Key data: B- CinemaScore; PostTrak shows 75% positive with a 59% definite recommend; 54% from critics and around 70% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes; $3.5 million from 29 international markets for a global start of about $9 million, per Showbiz411.

Why it matters: The people who went were broadly satisfied, so the problem was getting them through the door at all.

That’s an important difference from Other Mommy. A D+ horror film that opened big has a word-of-mouth problem. A B- drama that opened small has an awareness and interest problem. Good word of mouth can help with the second one, sometimes, but rarely from a $5.5 million base.

The international picture doesn’t help. Showbiz411 reports $3.5 million from 29 markets, which is weak for a film with this cast. The UK matters more than most here: Sony gave it 607 cinemas in the UK and Ireland, according to Screen Daily’s weekend preview, making it the widest new release of the weekend and a wider launch than The Social Network got here in 2010. Comscore’s UK figures early this week will show whether British audiences responded any differently.

There’s also an awards angle. Sony scheduled this in October for a reason. A flop doesn’t rule a film out of the Oscar race, but World of Reel’s headline on Sunday, which mentioned “no Oscar buzz” alongside the opening, suggests the conversation has already moved on.

7. Resident Evil Becomes the Franchise’s Biggest Film Worldwide (2026, Sony)

What makes it stand out: Zach Cregger’s reboot passed every Resident Evil film ever made at the global box office, and it was the No. 1 film in the world this weekend.

Key data: $8.4 million domestic in its fourth weekend; $62.7 million worldwide for the weekend, boosted by its China opening; running totals of $138.5 million domestic, $181.7 million international and $320.2 million worldwide on a reported $75 million budget.

Why it matters: It overtakes Resident Evil: The Final Chapter‘s $314.1 million, which had stood as the series record since 2017.

We followed the run from the start in 10 Box Office Takeaways From Zach Cregger’s Record Reboot, when it opened to $60.2 million and $108.3 million worldwide. Back then the big question was whether it could match the old films overseas, where the Milla Jovovich series always made most of its money. The Final Chapter, for instance, took only $26.8 million in North America but $314.1 million around the world.

The reboot has now done both. Its domestic total is more than five times The Final Chapter‘s, and China has pushed its global figure past the old record. Deadline reported earlier in the week that the film had taken $20 million in China across its first few days and was on course for around $35 million in its first week there.

It’s also, by a distance, Cregger’s biggest film. Weapons finished at around $270 million worldwide in 2025. In the UK and Ireland, Resident Evil had reached £11.24 million by 4 October, which made it the top film of September here according to Comscore. On a $75 million budget, Sony has a genuine franchise again, and a sequel conversation is surely coming.

8. Verity Drops 64% in Its Second Weekend (2026, US, Amazon MGM Studios)

What makes it stand out: Last weekend’s No. 1 fell hard, though it’s already well into profit.

Key data: About $11.5 million in second place (some reports put it at $11.4 million), down roughly 64% from its $32 million opening, for a domestic total of $53.9 million on a reported $40 million budget; starring Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett.

Why it matters: The steep drop confirms that its C+ audience grade was a warning, but the film had made its money back before the fall.

A 64% second-weekend drop is big. For comparison, BoxOfficeReport’s forecast had it falling 56% to $14 million, and the film came in a good $2.5 million under that. Some of that is Other Mommy taking the same audience. Both are adult thrillers with a strong female audience, and they shared a lot of the same screens and showtimes.

Still, Amazon MGM won’t be too worried. Verity opened to a $62.6 million global start last weekend on a $40 million budget, which we covered in our takeaways from that weekend. At $53.9 million domestic after ten days, it’ll finish ahead of Reminders of Him and Regretting You, the two most recent Colleen Hoover adaptations, comfortably.

The UK hold is better. Deadline’s international round-up has Verity at about $2.6 million in its second UK weekend, down only 41%, for a total of around $9.7 million. It opened at No. 1 here with £3.4 million, and British audiences seem to be sticking with it more than American ones.

9. Digger Falls About 60% in Its Second Weekend (2026, US, Warner Bros.)

What makes it stand out: Tom Cruise’s satire dropped out of the conversation almost as quickly as it entered it.

Key data: Sunday projections ranged from Variety’s $3.2 million (down 60%) to Deadline’s $2.9 million (down 64%), for a domestic total of about $14 million; Forbes put the drop at around 60%; reported production budget of at least $125 million.

Why it matters: A drop that steep after an $8 million opening means Digger will probably finish its domestic run under $25 million.

We said last week that Digger needed to avoid a drop of 60% or more. It didn’t. The C+ CinemaScore it got on opening night has played out exactly as you’d expect, and Friday’s number, under $1 million, already pointed to this result.

The figures differ a little between outlets. Variety projected $3.2 million, Deadline $2.9 million. Either way the film is well down the chart, and the running total of about $14 million is tiny next to a budget that’s been reported anywhere between $125 million and $180 million. Internationally, it had reached about $20 million by last Sunday.

Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s film was the Royal Film Performance in London on 22 September, and it opened fourth in the UK with £1.09 million from 660 sites. Interestingly, The Social Reckoning has now opened below Digger, which Showbiz411 pointed out on Saturday. That isn’t a race any studio wants to win.

10. Heart of the Beast Holds With $7.1 Million (2026, US, Paramount)

What makes it stand out: David Ayer’s Brad Pitt thriller keeps holding steadier than most of the films around it.

Key data: $7.1 million in its third weekend, down from $10.9 million last weekend (about 35%), in fourth place; starring Brad Pitt, J.K. Simmons and Anna Lambe.

Why it matters: In a weekend full of steep drops, a mid-30s percentage fall for an adult action film is a quiet success for Paramount.

Heart of the Beast opened on 25 September as one of three films to take more than $20 million that weekend. It’s the one that has held best. Its second weekend dropped 45%, and its third was gentler again, which suggests the audience is recommending it.

BoxOfficeReport had predicted $7.4 million for the weekend, so the result was right in line. That’s not exciting, but it’s reliable, and reliability is exactly what an older-skewing survival thriller needs. These films don’t open huge; they play for weeks.

It’s also good timing for Paramount, which is in the middle of absorbing Warner Bros. Discovery. A steady earner on one side of the merger and an expensive flop like Digger on the other is a neat summary of how the combined studio’s slate looks right now. In the UK, it was third on the 2 to 4 October chart in its second weekend.

11. The Market Crosses $8 Billion for the Year (2026, North America)

What makes it stand out: Even on a weekend dominated by a flop, the 2026 domestic box office passed a milestone it hadn’t reached by this point in years.

Key data: About $85.2 million for the weekend across all films, down 15.6% on last weekend but up 18.5% on the same weekend in 2025; year-to-date domestic total of $8.07 billion, up 19.6% on 2025, according to Comscore (Rentrak) data reported by Deadline.

Why it matters: If a near 20% rise on last year holds through the holidays, 2026 will be the strongest year for North American cinemas since 2019.

The headline numbers this year have been driven by a handful of giants. Spider-Man: Brand New Day reached $954 million domestic by the start of October, a record in its own right. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey passed $1 billion internationally. And a steady stream of mid-budget hits, Resident Evil, Verity and now Other Mommy, has kept autumn weekends healthier than usual.

The flops matter less to the overall total than you’d think. Digger and The Social Reckoning are expensive mistakes for their studios, but they’re not why people did or didn’t go to the cinema. Most weekends this autumn have had at least one film that pulled in a crowd, and that’s what keeps the year-to-date number climbing.

The UK is telling a similar, smaller story. UK and Ireland takings for September 2026 came to £73.3 million, up 3% on September 2025, with Resident Evil the month’s top film, according to Comscore figures reported by Screen Daily. The year-to-date UK total is closing in on £1 billion.

What to Watch Next

Two numbers will decide how this weekend is remembered. The first is Other Mommy‘s second weekend: anything worse than a 60% drop would confirm the D+ grade is doing damage, though its budget means it’ll be profitable either way. The second is the UK result for The Social Reckoning. Sony gave it the widest UK launch of the weekend, and if British audiences turned up where Americans didn’t, it at least has somewhere to go. We’ll have Comscore’s UK figures for 9 to 11 October as soon as they’re published.

Sources: Deadline, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, TheWrap, Deadline (global box office), Film Distributors’ Association (Comscore UK data).

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