‘The Social Reckoning’ Officially Removed From 2,000 Theaters

He has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal of introducing audiences to a whole new world of cinema. 

Audiences appear to have unfriended The Social Reckoning at the box office, following its drastic removal from 2,000 theaters this week. The movie, marketed as a follow-up to the 2010 classic The Social Network, underperformed in its first two weeks of release, causing Sony to put it out of its misery. Not only has the film fallen short of The Social Network‘s box-office performance from 16 years ago, but it has also received mediocre reviews despite being pegged as an awards contender. Much was said about Jeremy Strong‘s method-acting performance as Mark Zuckerberg in the film, but audiences were surprised to discover that Strong’s screen time is rather limited.

The protagonists of the movie are a whistleblower and an investigative journalist, played by Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White, respectively. As things stand, The Social Reckoning is set to fall short of both Madison’s Oscar-winning breakout movie Anora and White’s would-be Oscar contender Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. The new film dropped out of the top 10 chart this week, plummeting by 85%. Shockingly, it fell short of fellow Sony release Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which has spent an additional 70 days in theaters. While Spider-Man: Brand New Day grossed $230,000 this past weekend, The Social Reckoning added around $210,000 to its total, despite playing in twice as many theaters.

Four criminal masterminds. One of them was always going to be yours.
Here is who comes for you, why they picked you out of everyone available, and what they want from
the encounter.

Your nemesis does not want to beat you. He wants to know you
completely, and he is patient enough to wait for it. The frightening part is how good the
conversation is.

• Lecter is the most dangerous kind of opponent: the one who finds you interesting. He
  never raises his voice, because he has never needed to.
• You keep a great deal to yourself and you are careful about what you show. That reserve
  is exactly the door he would knock on.
• The films understood something other thrillers missed. The horror is not the violence.
  It is being perfectly understood by the wrong person.
• He would be unfailingly polite about all of it. That is the worst part.

Your nemesis is not after money, territory or revenge. He is
after a demonstration, and you are the person he has chosen to prove his point on.

• The Joker only picks opponents who believe in something. Your decency is not a defence
  against him. It is the entire reason he showed up.
• He has no plan you can predict and nothing you can take away, which removes every tool
  you would normally reach for.
• His whole argument is that you are one bad day away from being him, and you would spend
  the rest of your life proving him wrong.
• He would call it a magic trick. You would call it the worst night of your life.

Your nemesis respects you, which sounds flattering until you work
out what it means. He chose you because nobody else was worth his time.

• Moriarty is the original criminal mastermind, the template every later one borrows from:
  a mind the equal of the hero’s, pointed the wrong way.
• You enjoy being the cleverest person in the room. He is counting on exactly that, and he
  has already built the room.
• This is the rare nemesis who would be genuinely disappointed if you lost badly. He needs
  the game to be worth playing.
• It ends the way these things always end. Two people, one problem, and only one way down.

Your nemesis has no personal interest in you whatsoever, and that
is precisely what makes him unsurvivable. You are not a rival. You are a stop on the way.

• Chigurh does not negotiate, gloat or explain. He arrives, he asks one question, and the
  answer was decided long before you opened your mouth.
• You trust yourself to handle things. He is the one problem in the world that has no
  interest in how capable you are.
• No Country for Old Men rewrote the screen villain by removing the thing audiences
  quietly rely on: the sense that talking might work.
• Call it. He will wait.

Here’s How Much ‘The Social Reckoning’ Has Grossed at the Box Office

Image via Sony Pictures

Image via Sony Pictures

Image via Sony Pictures

The Social Reckoning will struggle to hit the $10 million mark domestically, and is currently sitting at $9 million. Globally, the film has grossed $15 million against a reported budget of $40 million. By comparison, David Fincher‘s The Social Network grossed nearly $100 million domestically and more than $225 million worldwide. It holds a “Certified Fresh” 96% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, having earned eight Oscar nominations. Sorkin won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for his work on the original. Meanwhile, The Social Reckoning is sitting at a 54% score on Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “An urgent warning that feels like it’s arriving a little too late, Aaron Sorkin’s spiritual sequel to one of his crowning achievements is a worthwhile critique of social media’s omnipresence that nonetheless pales in comparison to its predecessor.” Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

The Social Reckoning