‘The Social Reckoning’ opens to just $8.4 million worldwide

Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Reckoning,” the follow-up to 2010’s “The Social Network,” struggled at the box office in its opening weekend. It took in about $8.4 million worldwide.

The Sony Pictures release opened to about $5 million in North America and $3.3 million overseas, according to the latest figures from The Numbers. That is below the preliminary $5.5 million domestic estimate the Associated Press reported Sunday, when the film placed fifth. The AP said audiences gave it a B- CinemaScore, reviews were mixed to negative, and the film cost around $30 million to produce, not counting marketing.

“The Social Network” opened to more than $22 million and went on to gross more than $224 million worldwide, the AP reported.

The film dramatizes the 2021 leak of Facebook documents by whistleblower Frances Haugen, played by Mikey Madison, to Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, played by Jeremy Allen White. Jeremy Strong plays Mark Zuckerberg, and the story touches on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Mr. Sorkin has said that President Trump’s name never appears in the film and that he kept Trump signage out of the Jan. 6 sequence. “I’m not going to deny, of course, that the movie is political,” he told Politico. “I just think it shouldn’t be.”

Box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian told the AP that October is when studios take chances on topical films, and that such movies sometimes connect with audiences and sometimes don’t.