“The Social Reckoning,” Aaron Sorkin’s follow-up to “The Social Network,” is on track to earn only $5.5 million at the domestic box office this weekend, according to Sunday estimates.
That’s below the already staggering $7 million to $8 million the studio had projected, and it means Sorkin’s new film is unlikely to be a “Social Network”-sized hit. The previous film had a $22 million opening weekend and grossed $97 million domestically (and that’s at 2010 ticket prices). It also won Sorkin an Oscar and became one of the most influential screenwriters of Silicon Valley and startup culture.
Beyond the fate of a single film, the weekend box office could also provide clues about audience excitement, or the lack thereof, as we begin a case full of films featuring malevolent, real-world tech CEOs. There’s Alex Gibney’s four-hour documentary “Musk” (which also opened this weekend), Nathan Fielder’s seemingly uncategorizable Elizabeth Holmes documentary “You Can See Everything” (coming next weekend!), and the OpenAI boardroom drama “Artificial” (which has a new distributor after being dropped by Amazon).
Outside of theaters, Netflix also has a series called “The Altruists” coming in November, telling the story of Sam Bankman-Fried and the collapse of FTX.
As for “The Social Reckoning,” while “The Social Network” was a remarkable success, the theatrical landscape has changed significantly over the past 16 years. And where the first film focused on the excitement and drama of Facebook’s early days, the sequel is darker and more difficult – it’s all about whistleblower Frances Haugen’s decision to leak what became known as Facebook files.
So maybe a movie about Senate hearing and algorithm changes was never going to be a big hit. Or maybe the real audience for “The Social Reckoning” is among older moviegoers who only sporadically returned to the cinema. And I wonder if Facebook criticism feels a little less urgent for viewers who are more likely to lose sleep over AI.
Perhaps just as importantly, the reviews of the new movie just aren’t very good. (For what it’s worth, I enjoyed “The Social Reckoning,” but will fully admit that it’s overloaded with Sorkin’s trademark speech. And I couldn’t help but dream of a version directed—like the original—by David Fincher, with a score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.)
“Musk,” meanwhile, earned $69,000 during its opening weekend in four theaters. It will roll out more widely in the coming weeks, but given its length and subject matter, the documentary will likely reach a much larger audience when it begins streaming on HBO Max.
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