Like? The Social Network tops weekend box office

Tired of seeing your friends updating their Facebook statuses to something about The Social Network?

From the looks of it, don’t expect those updates to go away any time soon. The David Fincher-directed film, which depicts the creation of the popular social networking site and the troubles that arose for co-founder Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg), topped the box office this weekend. Receiving $23 million on its opening weekend, the film generated more revenue than two of its weekend competitors Let Me In and Case 39, combined.

Though numbers in attendance were high for this dark comedy, audience reviews averaging a B+ were not up the roof as movie critics such as Roger Ebert’s analyses were. Ebert praised the film for having the “rare quality of being not only as smart as its brilliant hero, but in the same way. It is cocksure, impatient, cold, exciting and instinctively perceptive.”

But as Ben Fritz of the Los Angeles Times notes, the question now is not to focus on The Social Network’s opening weekend revenue, but to see if it maintain its initial success and expand its audience in the weeks to come.