The Social Reckoning Opens Soft at $5.5 Million Against a $30 Million-Plus Budget
The Social Reckoning grossed $5.5 million in its opening weekend, as reported by Variety via The Verge. The film comes from Columbia Pictures and Sony.
The budget was reported in the $30 million to $42 million range. It held a 55% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, meaning just over half of the counted critic reviews were positive, at the time of that reporting.
The story follows two real figures from the Facebook disclosures. Mikey Madison plays whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former employee who shared internal documents. Jeremy Allen White plays Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, who reported on those documents.
Blumhouse's Other Mommy earned $27.5 million in the same weekend. The $5.5 million result is roughly one-fifth of that horror opening.
The Social Network opened to $22 million. That film went on to win three Academy Awards for screenplay, editing, and score. Writer Aaron Sorkin said Jesse Eisenberg had no interest in appearing in this follow-up.
The broader context here is familiar from past Hollywood efforts to dramatize recent tech history. People who work in technology lived through the news cycle, the hearings, and the debate over internal documents. For viewers outside that loop, the names and newsroom steps take work to follow before the drama can start.
In my view, that helps explain the split with Other Mommy. A horror trailer can sell a feeling in two minutes. A newsroom drama about platform accountability, or how a social network sets and enforces its rules, needs more setup. A 55% critics score does not settle quality, but it removes the strong word of mouth that can sometimes lift a slow start.
Worth flagging for the long arc, a soft opening does not close the subject. Platform power, whistleblowing, and press access remain live issues for engineers, policy staff, and security teams. Tech-literate viewers will still debate accuracy, characterization, and what was left out, and that debate has value. A future project with a tighter story may still find the audience this one missed.
