With potential MLB playoff games this weekend in addition to NFL in full swing, the majors have booked this weekend adequately without any mega tentpole fare, rather lower budget pics aimed at specific demos.

Sometimes during the tricky days of early October, studios will go with a tentpole, and watch a film crater as men flee to sports, especially if it doesn’t have electric word of mouth, i.e. last October’s Tron Ares ($33.2M). That didn’t occur during October 2021 as theatrical was coming from Covid, with a backlog of big tentpoles like Dune, No Time to Die and Halloween Kills.

Horror is always safe at this time in the run-up to Halloween and this weekend we have the net $19M R-rated Jessica Chastain leading, Rob Savage directed Other Mommy from Blumhouse Atomic Monster/Universal which is eyeing a No. 1 debut around $20M at 3,200 sites, which would be solid. Pic has the added advantage of PLFs. No Rotten Tomatoes critics score yet.

Horror has largely been good to Chastain at the domestic box office. Her first movie with director Andy Muschietti, 2013’s Mama, opened to $28.4M domestic via Universal and legged out to $71.6M stateside, $146.4M final global. Her second with the filmmaker, the Stephen King franchise IP, It Chapter Two, bowed to $91M in North America and finaled at $211.6M U.S., $473.1M WW in 2019.

In Other Mommy, Chastain has a freaky arguably sinister spiritual doppelgänger who is causing havoc with her eight-year old daughter and a marriage that’s already on the rocks. Pic’s campaign kicked off on July 17 with the first in-theater trailer attached to The Odyssey. The online trailer was timed to the pic’s one-sheet unveil and was juiced further as the pre-roll to Obsession’s debut on Peacock, tallying 242M global views. 2PM showtime starts in North America on Thursday. Best demos are women under 25 and men over 25 in first choice, both demos ahead of The End of Oak Street at the same point in time ($21M opening).

The offshore footprint will be staggered with a limited footprint in Mexico, UK and Australia and other territories like France, Netherlands, Korea and Japan going later.

Since taking the reins as a director, Aaron Sorkin has been constantly asked on press tours if he’d make a sequel to his Oscar winning The Social Network. He finally has with The Social Reckoning which follows Jeremy Strong (not Jesse Eisenberg) as Facebook architect Mark Zuckerberg embroiled in a crisis as the tech corp’s whistleblower France Haugen (Oscar winner Mikey Madison) leaks internal company docs to a WSJ reporter (Jeremy Allen White) about the social media platform’s ill ways in misinformation and being a bad influence on teens. Critics are so-so right now on it at 64% fresh well below Social Network‘s 96% certified fresh. Quitely stealing thunder, and not even opening until Christmas Day is NEON’s Luca Guadagnino OpenAI movie Artificial, which just world premiered at the NY Film Festival and drummed up platinum early reviews hailing the movie as a pseudo-like follow-up to Social Network. Artificial stars Social Network‘s Andrew Garfield as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. With zany headlines that AI will impact the human race in a decade, Artificial is looking like as the more prescient themed film over the look in the rear view mirror, Social Recknoning. All of this lends itself to a mid-single digit opening at 2,200 theaters for Social Reckoning, perhaps around where the $8M where Tom Cruise $160M Digger flopped. The good news for Social Reckoning is that at a net production cost between $30M-$42M, before global P&A, it’s significantly cheaper than Digger, and the movie was co-financed by Alcon. Digger didn’t have a co-financier. Previews start at 4PM for the R-rated movie on Thursday. Guys over 25 are the best in first choice, about the same as Allen White’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere last year which opened to $8.8M domestic, and finaled at $22.6M domestic, and over $45M global.

Overseas, the hope is that The Social Reckoning gets sophisticated audiences’ word of mouth in Europe. Pic will have a 92% footprint offshore with a $6M opening abroad ala other dramas such as ultimate Oscar Best Picture winner Spotlight and the Fox News expose Bombshell.

Also opening this weekend in North America is Angel Studio’s western Angel and the Badman starring Tommy Lee Jones, Neal McDonough and Zachary Levi at 2,000 theaters. There’s also Converse’s 20th anniversary re-release of Guillermo del Toro’s 3x Oscar winner Pan’s Labyrinth going via Fathom at 1,008 sites. That pic’s current domestic B.O. stands at $37.6M.

Meanwhile, Amazon MGM Studio’s second weekend of Verity should decline at least -60% potentially more off its C+ CinemaScore for around $12M. The feature take of the Colleen Hover novel currently counts $37.9M at the domestic B.O. through Tuesday.

NEON has their Cannes Palme d’Or winner Fjord going in four LA and NYC theaters this weekend.

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