Pictured: Other Mommy star Jessica Chastain. Photo: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons (license on file page).
Horror won the weekend. Other Mommy, the Jessica Chastain film from Universal, Blumhouse and Atomic Monster, opened at No. 1 with an estimated $27.5 million from 3,365 theaters over October 9–11, according to Sunday studio estimates reported by the Associated Press and Boxoffice Pro. That beat pre-release forecasts of around $20 million, on a reported budget of about $19 million. With 50 international markets added, its global debut reached roughly $45.2 million.
Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning had a much rougher start, opening fifth with $5.5 million from 2,606 theaters. That is about a quarter of the $22.4 million The Social Network opened to in 2010, and below even the low end of most forecasts.
Other Mommy
Directed by Rob Savage (Host, The Boogeyman) and produced by James Wan, Other Mommy is based on Josh Malerman’s 2024 novel Incidents Around the House. It follows a young girl with a sinister presence in her closet that looks exactly like her mother, and Chastain plays both the mother and the thing imitating her.
The opening came despite harsh reactions: audiences gave it a D+ CinemaScore and critics an 18% Rotten Tomatoes score, per Boxoffice Pro. The AP reported the crowd was split evenly between men and women, with about two-thirds aged 18 to 34. A weak score like that usually means steep drops in the weeks ahead, but on its modest budget the film is already a win for Universal.
The Social Reckoning
Sorkin writes and directs this follow-up to his Oscar-winning script for The Social Network. It tells the story of Facebook engineer turned whistleblower Frances Haugen and Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, with Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong, who takes over the role of Mark Zuckerberg from Jesse Eisenberg. Audiences gave it a B- CinemaScore, and reviews were mixed to negative. The AP put its production cost at about $30 million.
Weekend top 10 (estimates)
- Other Mommy: $27.5 million (new)
- Verity: $11.5 million (down 64%; $53.9 million total)
- Resident Evil: $8.4 million ($138.5 million total)
- Heart of the Beast: $7.1 million ($49.7 million total)
- The Social Reckoning: $5.5 million (new)
- Forgotten Island: $4.5 million ($30.3 million total)
- Primetime: $4.0 million ($41.5 million total)
- Digger: $3.2 million (down 60%; $14.4 million total)
- Angel and the Badman: $2.1 million (new)
- The Odyssey: $2.0 million ($623 million total)
Tom Cruise’s Digger fell 60% in its second weekend; see our Digger report for its opening. Resident Evil is now the franchise’s biggest worldwide grosser at about $320 million, per Boxoffice Pro. All films combined took in about $85 million, down 15% from last weekend. These are studio estimates; final figures come out Monday.