Hollywood loves a box office grudge match, but this weekend’s is a strange one. On one side, an Oscar winner playing a mother who may or may not be a demon. On the other, Aaron Sorkin, one of the most decorated screenwriters alive, directing a sequel to his own Oscar-winning Facebook movie. Spooky season has picked its winner, and it picked her in a landslide.
Other Mommy, Jessica Chastain’s new supernatural horror film, opened on October 9 and immediately took charge of the weekend. The Universal and Blumhouse-Atomic Monster release scared up $3.6 million in Thursday previews alone, and trackers have it heading toward an opening weekend in the $20 million to $29 million range. That would make it one of the biggest horror debuts of 2026, possibly the biggest domestic opening for a horror book adaptation since It: Chapter Two back in 2019.
Meanwhile, Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning is looking at something in the $7 million to $8 million range for the weekend, which TheWrap notes would land below $10 million. For a movie about the man who reprogrammed human social life, that’s a rough way to start.
The Numbers Behind the Weekend
The $3.6 million preview figure matters because it tells you how much urgency an audience feels. Previews measure the hardest-core moviegoers, the ones who will not wait for reviews. Universal is officially projecting around $20 million for the full weekend across roughly 3,200 theaters. Some independent trackers are more bullish, floating $22 million to $29 million, and one box office analyst has pinned it as high as $26 to $28 million.
Here’s the part that should make Blumhouse executives smile: Other Mommy reportedly cost only $19 million to produce. For a studio that built an empire on cheap scares and big returns, a $20 million-plus opening on a $19 million budget is the math that keeps the lights on. Blumhouse has been in a bit of a creative slump with original horror, with titles like Wolf Man, Drop, and The Woman in the Yard failing to launch new franchises. This could be the reset.
So What Is Other Mommy, Exactly?
The premise is simple, which is why it works. The film is based on Josh Malerman’s 2024 novel Incidents Around the House, and it follows an eight-year-old girl named Bela who is being tormented by a supernatural entity that wears her mother’s face. She calls it Other Mommy. The creature doesn’t just haunt the kid, it starts tearing into her parents’ already rocky marriage too.
Chastain plays both roles: the mother and the thing pretending to be her. It is the kind of dual performance that lives or dies on tiny facial choices, and early coverage keeps circling back to how much of the movie rests on her shoulders. The film is directed by Rob Savage and produced by James Wan’s Atomic Monster alongside Blumhouse, so the horror pedigree is real. Jay Duplass plays the husband, with Dichen Lachman, Karen Allen, Arian Moayed, and young Arabella Olivia Clark as Bela rounding out the cast.
The story has a genuinely creepy origin too. Malerman has said the book was inspired by a real incident involving his brother and his niece. One night, while his brother tucked his daughter into bed, the little girl said good night to “Other Mommy,” seemingly speaking to nobody. That single moment became a novel, and now it’s a major studio release. Some of the best horror starts exactly that way, with something small and true that you can’t explain away.
The Critics Cannot Agree on Anything
Here is where it gets fun. The reviews for Other Mommy are all over the place, in a way that almost helps a horror movie. The New York Times ran a review titled “Parent, Trap,” leaning into the film’s campy streak, and noted Chastain’s committed, charismatic double performance. The New York Post, on the other hand, had no patience for it at all and dismissed the movie as awful, stupid horror.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film sits around 18 percent with roughly 38 reviews counted so far. That sounds brutal, but horror has a long history of outrunning bad reviews. Audiences don’t check aggregate scores before a scary movie the way they do before a drama, especially in October. And a trailer that genuinely unsettles people, which this one clearly does, is worth more than any critic’s thumbs up.
Speaking of the trailer, Chastain told a great story about it while promoting the film with Duplass. After the trailer went public, she started getting flooded with texts from friends. One friend told her he had trouble looking at his wife that night. Duplass’s response was perfect: “Wow, we’re doing a real service in the world right now.” When your marketing makes a grown man suspicious of his own spouse, you’ve done your job.
The Awkward Part: It’s Chastain vs. Her Friend
The most human detail in this whole box office story is that Chastain and Sorkin are friends. Chastain has talked openly with The Hollywood Reporter about going up against Sorkin’s movie this weekend, and the coverage keeps describing it as a friendly duel. It is one thing to lose to a rival studio. It is another to get lapped by someone you have dinner with.
The Social Reckoning is Sorkin’s follow-up to his 2010 classic The Social Network, with Jeremy Strong taking over the role of Mark Zuckerberg. It is an adult drama about Frances Haugen’s whistleblowing story, the kind of serious prestige picture that usually opens in awards season, not head to head with a $19 million Blumhouse screamer. Opening the same weekend as a viral horror movie was always going to be a gamble, and right now it looks like the wrong one.
To be fair, the two films aren’t really competing for the same audience. Nobody is choosing between a Zuckerberg drama and a doppelganger horror movie based on star power. But headlines don’t care about audience overlap. They care about winners and losers, and this weekend has a very clear winner.
What This Weekend Actually Means
Zoom out, and Other Mommy‘s opening says a few things about where the movie business is right now. First, original horror is still the most reliable theatrical genre in America. While $150 million blockbusters keep flaming out, a cheap, scary, well-marketed movie can print money. Universal’s Obsession opened to $17.2 million earlier this year and went on to earn hundreds of millions worldwide. Other Mommy looks ready to top that opening.
Second, the book-to-screen pipeline for horror is quietly elite. Stephen King’s adaptations have carried the genre for decades, and now Malerman’s novel is following the same path. A $19 million budget, a name actress, a creepy true story behind the premise, and a trailer that goes viral. That is a repeatable formula, and every studio in town is watching it work in real time.
Third, and maybe most interesting, October belongs to horror in a way no other month belongs to any genre. Theaters lean into it, audiences show up for it, and the calendar basically clears a lane. A prestige drama opening in the middle of spooky season is fighting the calendar itself.
Watch the trailer below, then go see the movie before somebody spoils the kitchen scene for you. Yes, the kitchen scene. Chastain herself flagged it as the moment that got under everyone’s skin, and she would know. She had to film it.
The Bottom Line
Jessica Chastain made a horror movie for $19 million, scared up $3.6 million before Friday even started, and is now on track for a $20 million-plus weekend that could beat every horror opening of the year. Aaron Sorkin, her friend, is watching from the other side of the aisle with a movie tracking under $10 million. Spooky season has spoken, and it did not stutter.
Full numbers land on Sunday. But this one already feels decided.
Sources: ComingSoon, TheWrap, Archynetys. Also see: our Social Reckoning coverage, Tom Cruise’s Digger box office bomb, and more in Entertainment.
