Aaron Sorkin’s ‘Social Reckoning’ is off to a weak start

“The Social Reckoning,” Aaron Sorkin’s follow-up to “The Social Network,” is on-track to make only $5.5 million at the domestic box office this weekend, according to Sunday estimates.

That’s below the already underwhelming $7 million to $8 million the studio had projected, and it means Sorkin’s new movie is unlikely to become a “Social Network”-sized hit. The earlier film had a $22 million opening weekend and made a total of $97 million domestically (and that’s at 2010 ticket prices). It also won Sorkin an Oscar and became one of most influential on-screen depictions of Silicon Valley and startup culture.

Beyond the fate of a single film, the weekend box office could also offer hints about audience excitement, or lack thereof, as we kick off a fall full of movies starring villainous, real-world tech CEOs. There’s Alex Gibney’s four-hour documentary “Musk” (which also opened this weekend), Nathan Fielder’s apparently uncategorizable Elizabeth Holmes documentary “You Can See Everything” (coming next weekend!), and the OpenAI boardroom drama “Artificial” (which has a new distributor after being dropped by Amazon).

Outside of theaters, Netflix also has a series called “The Altruists” coming in November, telling the story of Sam Bankman-Fried and the collapse of FTX.

As for “The Social Reckoning,” while “The Social Network” was a notable success, the theatrical landscape has changed significantly in the last 16 years. And where the first film focused on the excitement and drama of Facebook’s early days, the sequel is darker and heavier — it’s all about whistleblower Frances Haugen’s decision to leak what became known as the Facebook files.

So maybe a movie about Senate hearings and algorithm changes was never going to be a big hit. Or maybe “The Social Reckoning”’s real audience is among older moviegoers who have only returned sporadically to theaters. And I wonder if critiquing Facebook feels a bit less urgent to audiences who are more likely to be losing sleep over AI.

Maybe just as importantly, the new movie’s reviews just aren’t very good. (For what it’s worth, I enjoyed “The Social Reckoning” but will fully admit that it’s overloaded Sorkin’s trademark speechifying. And I couldn’t help dreaming about a version directed — like the original — by David Fincher, with a score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.)

 “Musk,” meanwhile, made $69,000 during its opening weekend in four theaters. It will roll out more broadly in the coming weeks, but given its length and subject matter, the documentary will probably reach many more viewers once it starts streaming on HBO Max.

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