Weekend Box Office: Other Mommy Scares Up $27.5M

The weekend box office just delivered the most ultimate lopsided battles of 2026 and horror won by a bold knockout. Jessica Chastain's Other Mommy scared up an estimated $27.5 million to take #1, while Aaron Sorkin's prestige drama The Social Reckoning stumbled to just $4.01 million and seventh place (Monday actuals). One cost $18 million. The other cost $30 million. You do the math.

The full top 5

Here's how the weekend box office shaped up (studio estimates):

1. Other Mommy — $27.5M (Universal/Blumhouse, 3,365 theaters)
2. Verity — $11.5M (Amazon MGM, -64% second weekend, $53.9M domestic total)
3. Resident Evil — $8.4M ($138.5M domestic total, $320M worldwide — a franchise record)
4. Heart of the Beast — $7.1M
7. The Social Reckoning — $4.01M (Sony, 2,606 theaters)

Total domestic weekend: ~$85.2M and the 2026 ticket sales just crossed $8 billion, a full 59 days earlier than last year.

Other Mommy: the $18M movie that beat everyone

Let's talk about the winner first, because the numbers are wild. Other Mommy about an eight-year-old girl whose imaginary "other mother" turns a terrifyingly real cost just $18 million to produce. It made $27.5M domestic plus $17.7M international for a $45.2M worldwide opening. It has already more than doubled its budget in three days.

Here's the twist: Critics Hated it. We're talking 18% on Rotten Tomatoes, a D+ CinemaScore one of the worst received wide releases of the 2026 year. Universal didn't even screen it for most reviewers until the last minute. Didn't matter. Horror audiences showed up anyway, with two-thirds of the crowd aged 18–34.

The Social Reckoning: prestige vs. reality

Now the other side. The Social Reckoning Sorkin's follow-up to The Social Network, with Jeremy Strong stepping in for Jesse Eisenberg managed just $4.01M from 2,606 theaters. Monday actuals put the final weekend at $4.01M — a steep drop from the $5.5M Sunday estimate.

On a net $30M budget, that's a rough start. For comparison, the original Social Network opened to $22.4M back in 2010 this did less than a third of that. Even Tom Cruise's Digger, widely called a bomb at $8M, opened bigger.

My take: genre is the whole story

I've been saying this all year, and this weekend proved it again: in 2026, genre beats prestige at the box office, every single time. Horror is now a $1.28 billion domestic business this year 90% of last year's all-time record with 81 days still to go. Six horror films have opened at #1 in 2026. Meanwhile, adult dramas keep face-planting no matter how good the cast is.

Other Mommy will collapse next weekend that D+ CinemaScore guarantees it. But it doesn't need legs. At $18M, it's already a massive win. The Social Reckoning, on the other hand, needed good word of mouth to survive, and a 54% Rotten Tomatoes score isn't going to provide it.

What to watch next

Horror season isn't slowing down: Crawlers and Whalefall open October 16, then Clayface on October 23. If the pattern holds, expect at least one more horror #1 before Halloween.