Box office isn't scary good — Other Mommy tracking below Chastain’s other horror movies
As spooky season looms, Jessica Chastain’s latest chiller, Other Mommy, is tracking below her previous horror hits — and Mama’s the yardstick it’s struggling to match.
Let’s talk about Other Mommy, Jessica Chastain’s latest trip into horror. If you were hoping it would match the box office fireworks of her earlier scare-fests, temper your expectations now: the projections for opening weekend are a bit sobering compared to her last two chilling outings.
Industry forecasts peg Other Mommy at a $20 million opening haul.
To give you some context, Chastain’s horror streak goes back to Mama in 2013—that film snatched $28.4 million on its debut. Then you've got IT: Chapter 2, which pretty much ate up the box office with a thunderous $91 million opening. Other Mommy, by comparison, isn’t expected to break out of the gate in quite the same way, despite its R rating and Blumhouse backing. Not all spooky season releases make the cash registers sing, it seems.
The Story's Odd Origins
The concept isn’t your standard haunted house fare. Other Mommy is directed by Rob Savage and centres on a family being terrorised by a supernatural figure that masquerades as the mum. Their eight-year-old daughter, Bela (played by Arabella Olivia Clark), is not just dealing with ghosts—she’s also an unwilling audience to her parents’ failing marriage, thanks to the spectral interference.
The script was inspired by a bizarre, real-life moment from author Josh Malerman’s own family: his niece, when tucked in at night, once said goodnight to 'Other Mommy'—and there wasn’t anyone else there. Malerman took that unsettling exchange and ran with it, first crafting the 2024 novel Incidents Around the House, then seeing it adapted into this film. Not your average bedtime story, really.
The Cast and Crew
- Jessica Chastain as the titular "Other Mommy"
- Jay Duplass as the long-suffering husband
- Arabella Olivia Clark as Bela, the daughter who kicks everything off
- Dichen Lachman, Arian Moayed, Karen Allen, Sean Kaufman, Adam Silver, and Rosie Anne O’Gorman filling out the rest of the cast
Behind the camera, Nathan Elston does the screenplay honours, with Universal Pictures distributing. James Wan’s producing this one—and if you know horror, you know he’s had a hand in plenty of hits already—through Blumhouse and Atomic Monster.
If you’re marking your calendar, Other Mommy arrives in cinemas on 9 October 2026, right in the thick of Halloween hype.