Box Office: ‘Other Mommy’ Makes $3.6 Million in Previews

After “Obsession” and “Backrooms” made 2026 a huge year for horror, Jessica Chastain‘s “Other Mommy” is looking to continue the trend at the box office this weekend.

The Universal movie, produced by Blumhouse-Atomic Monster, has made $3.6 million in previews from 2,850 domestic screens. It’s expected to open with $22 million to $28 million this weekend, with some predictions as high as $35 million, thanks to the banner year that horror movies have had. “Other Mommy” should have enough to triumph over last week’s box office champ, the Colleen Hoover adaptation “Verity” (starring Anne Hathaway as another freaky mother).

Chastain plays Ursula, the mom to a young daughter named Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark), but she also plays a strange, terrifying entity known as “Other Mommy” who looks exactly like Ursula. Their family, including Ursula’s husband Russell (Jay Duplass), is terrorized by this evil, supernatural mom. The cast also includes Dichen Lachman, Arian Moayed, Karen Allen, Sean Kaufman and more. It’s based on the 2024 novel “Incidents Around the House” by Josh Malerman, which won several awards for top horror books. The trailer for the movie, which includes a particularly frightening jump scare from Chastain as Other Mommy, went viral online after playing in front of theatrical screenings.

“Other Mommy” will easily beat out this weekend’s other new release, Sony’s “The Social Reckoning,” which is tracking an opening in the low single digits between $5 million and $10 million. The film made $650,000 in previews. Directed by Aaron Sorkin, “The Social Reckoning” is a follow-up to 2010’s “The Social Network” and chronicles the 2021 Facebook leak by whistleblower Frances Haugen (played by Mikey Madison). Jeremy Strong plays Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in the new movie, while Jeremy Allen White is Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, who digs into thousands of pages of internal documents.