This past weekend, audiences were way more interested in going out to see Jessica Chastain’s creepy horror turn over Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Reckoning. Other Mommy had a great box office debut, while The Social Reckoning stumbled. And as it turns out, the movies’ leads had a funny text exchange about it.
Chastain and Strong are actually longtime friends who met while establishing their careers in New York City over 20 years ago. They've also been in multiple films together over the years. Here’s their text chain about the weekend box office, as shared by Chastain on Instagram:
Strong is the one who started the text conversation with a screenshot of an article from Vulture titled “Other Mommy Spanks The Social Reckoning At The Box Office”. He followed it up with an emoji of a middle finger and a kissy face to his longtime pal.
Chastain deflected by talking about the “hysterical” images the article used from their respective movies. She commented that Strong looked “SO SAD” in The Social Reckoning photo, and the Succession actor replied by saying that she looked “INSANE” in Other Mommy... which is of course what she was going for in the horror flick.
Strong and Chastain's first collaboration was in 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty, where they played CIA analysts before working together in Aaron Sorkin’s Molly’s Game in 2017. Ironically enough, The Social Reckoning is also a Sorkin film! The pair were also in 2022’s Armageddon Time, but Chastain only had a small appearance in that one.
The Social Reckoning is a follow-up to 2010’s The Social Network, and it's about the 2021 Facebook leak by whistleblower Frances Haugen and journalist Jeff Horwitz. Strong had the opportunity to bring his own take on the Facebook creator to the big screen over 15 years after Jesse Eisenberg played the CEO in his earlier years.
Other Mommy, on the other hand, has Chastain using her acting chops to bring to life a demonic entity that’s haunting a young girl named Bela. In the scary movie, Bela is haunted by “Other Mommy”, which is an evil being that takes the form of her mother. It’s from Jason Blum and James Wan, who had success with other horror flicks on the 2026 movie schedule like Obsession and Backrooms.
Other Mommy may have been the box office winner between it and The Social Reckoning, but the movie has earned a very low Rotten Tomatoes score of 17% from critics. Audiences didn’t like it much better, given they gave it a D+ CinemaScore. The Social Reckoning is more well received, with a 55% on Rotten Tomatoes and a CinemaScore of B-.
While Strong and Chastain were technically head-to-head at the box office this weekend, it sounds like they had a good time poking fun at each other and the whole funny thing. You can see both their movies in theaters now. Perhaps support them both and have the weirdest double feature ever?
