Okay, that’s just silly. If that headline were true, The Social Network would have pulled in something like $3 billion this weekend, and not even James Cameron could pull off those kinds of numbers. The way it stands, more like 4 million friends went to see David Fincher’s latest film, but that’s not a number to scoff at.

It’s not groundbreaking by any stretch. It’s not even Fincher’s best opening to date. That remains the $30 million Panic Room was able to pull in its opening weekend. Nonetheless, The Social Network drew solid numbers, and the film is going to look like anything but a bomb once the awards considerations start rolling in.

Sadly, a film that will be thought of as a bomb is Matt Reeves’s Let Me In. Overture’s inability to sell the movie as anything other than a straight vampire tale seems to have hurt it tremendously. With a budget of only $20 million, Let Me In could end up breaking even at some point along the way, especially once the international numbers start to trickle in. However, this opening is going to be viewed as nothing but a disappointment, especially considering the director’s previous film, Cloverfield, opened to more than $40 million.

Case 39 performed just about as expected, though its ranking one slot higher than Let Me In is eye-opening to say the very least. You can’t expect much from a film that has been shelved for nearly three years, and Paramount seems to be hoping for anything to put back into their coffers here.

Elsewhere at the box office, The Owls of Ga’Hoole held onto a pretty nice, second weekend take. Most of the films already in the market performed adequately for the first weekend of October. Easy A is on track to top $50 million as is Wall Street 2. The Town won’t be making a break for the $100-million domestic spot, but it will end up somewhere around $80 million, not bad at all for a serious Oscar contender. Unfortunately, the world of unrated horror might be put back into the vault, as Hatchet 2, opening on 68 screens, was unable to pull in more than $1000 per screen. Like the first film, it will likely live on in DVD sales sparked by the positive word of mouth coming out of Fantastic Fest.

Here is how the weekend box office shaped up:

1. The Social Network – $23m NEW
2. Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole – $10.8m (-32.6%) $30m total
3. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps – $10.1m (-46.9%) $35.8m total
4. The Town – $10m (-35.9%) $64.3m total
5. Easy A – $7m (-34%) $42.4m total
6. You Again – $5.5m (-34%) $16.4m total
7. Case 39 – $5.3m NEW
8. Let Me In – $5.3m NEW
9. Devil – $3.6m (-44.4%) $27.3m total
10. Alpha and Omega – $3m (-36.6%) $19m total

The weekend total for the top 10 came in at $83.6 million, down 5.7% from last weekend and 4% from the same weekend last year. At that time, Zombieland and The Toy Story 1 and 2 Double Feature were the new kids on the block helping supplement what Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs was already bringing in.

The Social Network had to pull its own weight here with little help coming from any of the other newbies. All of those newbies, by the way, were horror films, an indication movie goers might not be all that ready for the oncoming slate of genre pictures set to release in October. They’ll have another one hitting next weekend, Wes Craven’s latest film, My Soul to Take, as well as two, more lighthearted films, Life As We Know It and Secretariat.

We’ll be back on Thursday to run down how we see the weekend turning out.

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