Although it cost a lot less than Digger, writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s Social Reckoning is an even bigger box office bomb. In its debut weekend, this sequel to the Oscar-winning box office hit The Social Network grossed just $5.5 million domestic. Overseas, it earned only $3.5 million. That’s a global total of $9 million.
By contrast, Digger, which is shaping up to become one of the biggest box office catastrophes of all time, debuted to $28 million worldwide.
All in, my guess is that between the reported $40 million production budget and an estimated $60 to $70 million promotion budget, Sony dumped about $110 million into Sorkin’s fascist message movie. With a dreadful C- Cinemascore, it’s hard to see this crossing even $20 million worldwide, which means Sony will earn a return of just $10 million, which means a $100 million loss.
Ha. Ha.
Digger earned a C+ on the CinemaScore.
Some people still think Hollywood is all about making a profit. That’s simply not true. Sure, Hollywood would like to make a profit, but what drives Hollywood is not money. Instead, it’s an obsession with manipulating how people think about and see the world. There is no other explanation for Digger, The Social Reckoning, or the rest of these woke flops and the ongoing destruction of our beloved franchises.
The Social Network (2010) was a critical and financial hit because it was a cool movie about smart people doing cool stuff. Yes, there was conflict. Yes, the characters were flawed. Nevertheless, they were strivers, dreamers, and world-shakers. You got a buzz watching them do their thing in the same way you do watching mobsters thumb their nose at social conventions. We can all relate to rebels, to that impulse even if it actualizes through terrible behavior. Sorkin wrote that movie. He won an Oscar for writing that movie.
Did he not understand what made that movie so special that it lives on in our culture 16 years later?
Obviously he didn’t, because nothing about The Social Reckoning touched on what made and makes its predecessor so great. We don’t see Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) oozing charisma as he thwarts, outwits, and outthinks everyone, even while behaving badly. Instead, we get Jeremy Strong’s robotic and flat version of Zuckerberg defensively spouting talking points. And the sequel’s message…?
Sorkin is demanding billionaire, multinational CEOs censor the electronic public square, censor us, censor you and I! He wants corporations deciding which opinions are acceptable and correct. He wants elites picking and choosing which ideas are allowed.
SPOILER ALERT…
People I trust tell me the movie ends with Zuckerberg finally doing the “right thing” and receiving cheers from everyone around him after he blacklists the sitting U.S. President (Trump) from Facebook.
I can just see Sorkin goose-stepping around his Malibu mansion when he decided that in a democracy it was heroic for a multinational corporation that has seized control of the national conversation to blacklist the president We the People chose to lead us.
Sorkin is so morally illiterate it beggars belief.
Apparently, he’s angry over the mostly peaceful January 6 protests at the U.S. Capitol and blames it (in part) on Facebook’s algorithm.
Okay, but what about the BLM riots? What about the explosive rise in antisemitism based on anti-Jewish lies about things like “genocide?” What about Luigi? What about Charlie Kirk? What about Antifa? What about the trans mass shootings?
If Sorkin were just some squishy little bitch who believed in censoring all speech that promotes division, that would be bad enough. But he only wants us silenced, you and I silenced, Normal People silenced – and that makes him a fascist.