Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Reckoning” is off to a weak start at the domestic box office, with Sunday estimates putting the weekend at just $5.5 million. That is below the already modest $7 million to $8 million the studio had projected, and it makes a “Social Network”-sized hit unlikely. The 2010 original opened to $22 million and went on to earn $97 million domestically, while winning Sorkin an Oscar and shaping how Silicon Valley was portrayed on screen.
The sequel, which focuses on whistleblower Frances Haugen and the Facebook files, is darker and heavier than the first film, and reviews have been poor. The source also notes that audiences may be less concerned about Facebook criticism in an era dominated by AI anxiety, and that older moviegoers—a likely target audience—have only sporadically returned to theaters.
The weekend’s other tech-CEO offering, Alex Gibney’s four-hour documentary “Musk,” made just $69,000 in four theaters. With more tech-villain films on the way, including an Elizabeth Holmes documentary and an OpenAI boardroom drama, the weak starts suggest limited theatrical appetite for this genre—though streaming may ultimately be where these stories find their audiences.