Aaron Sorkin's The Social Reckoning, his follow-up to The Social Network, opened to $5.5 million, The Verge reported, citing Variety, against a budget reported in the $30 million to $42 million range. Columbia Pictures and Sony carry the loss. That opening is less than a fifth of the low end of that budget. It is also about a quarter of the $22 million The Social Network took in its debut weekend.
Reviews did not help. It sits at 55% on Rotten Tomatoes and was widely criticized on social media.
Sorkin cast Mikey Madison as whistleblower Frances Haugen and Jeremy Allen White as Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz. Madison told The Hollywood Reporter that Sorkin's vision as director kept her from authentically and faithfully representing a real person. She said she hopes to meet that standard in future work.
Jesse Eisenberg, who played Mark Zuckerberg in the first film, had no interest in appearing in this one, according to Sorkin.
Losing that link narrows whatever claim the sequel has on the original's audience. A follow-up without the actor most identified with the first film is a harder sell.
That gap between the opening and the production budget is the commercial problem. A $5.5 million start against a budget of at least $30 million means the film would need to multiply its debut roughly six times over to cover production cost, and a 55% critic score rarely builds the repeat business that kind of run requires. A long tail would need audiences who skipped opening weekend to reconsider, and the social media response gives them little reason to. At the top end, the budget range reaches $42 million, which only widens the gap. Awards attention is the remaining lever. The Social Network won three Oscars, for screenplay, editing and score, though it opened four times higher than this one did.
Blumhouse's Other Mommy collected $27.5 million over the same weekend, five times the Sorkin film's take. That contrast carries a scheduling lesson: a novel horror title with no franchise history outdrew a $30 million-plus drama leaning on a name audiences already knew. Read together, the two results suggest little appetite right now for the subject the Sorkin film was built around.