Jessica Chastain buried Jeremy Strong's Sorkin film — her Molly's Game co-star texted her the headline himself
Twenty years of friendship, two films together and one emoji you would not send your boss. And she still found a way to twist the knife.
On the evening of 12 October 2026, Jessica Chastain posted a string of texts to her Instagram Story. The sender was Jeremy Strong, and his opening message was a Vulture headline about the weekend box office, where Chastain's horror Other Mommy had just flattened his new film, Aaron Sorkin's The Social Reckoning. Vulture had illustrated the story with the two of them side by side, in character.
The highlights of the exchange, as Variety picked them up the next morning:
- Chastain: "Omg."
- Strong: a middle finger emoji, followed by a kiss.
- Chastain, on Vulture's choice of photos: "These pics are hysterical."
- Strong: "Its so funny."
- Chastain: "You look SO SAD!"
Most actors who lose a weekend to a friend wait for the friend to bring it up. Strong went and found the headline himself and pressed send. On brand for an actor whose commitment to the role once got its own New Yorker profile.
Five to one at the box office
Other Mommy, from Universal and Blumhouse, opened at number one with $27.5 million, comfortably ahead of the $20 million the studio had expected, on a reported $18 million budget. Rob Savage directed, and Chastain plays two roles: a mother, and the thing in the house wearing her face. Audiences were not exactly charmed. The CinemaScore came back D+, and the top comment under the opening numbers on r/boxoffice is three words long: "78% drop incoming". Universal is unlikely to lose sleep over it.
The Social Reckoning, Sorkin's follow-up to The Social Network, took an estimated $5.5 million from 2,606 cinemas and finished fifth. Pre-release tracking had it at $7–8 million, and the net production spend is put at $30 million. Strong plays Mark Zuckerberg, Mikey Madison plays Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, and Jeremy Allen White plays Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz. The reviews were polite rather than warm: 54% on Rotten Tomatoes, a B- CinemaScore.
Read more: Well, that stung — The Social Reckoning is a major box office face-plant
So a horror film audiences graded D+ did five times the business of a prestige Sorkin drama with an Oscar winner and an Oscar nominee on the poster. Sixteen years after The Social Network, the people turned up for the haunted mum.
A D+ horror outgrossed a Sorkin script five to one, and the loser was the one who sent the headline.
Twenty years in each other's corner
None of this is a feud, and that is what makes it funny. Chastain and Strong go back two decades and have made two films together. The better known is Molly's Game (2017), Sorkin's own directorial debut, where she played poker queen Molly Bloom and he played Dean Keith, the boss whose high-stakes game she ends up running. Nine years on, she has taken his weekend too.
When a New Yorker profile of Strong went viral in December 2021 for its stories about his Method intensity on Succession, Chastain was the first big name to defend him. She tweeted that she had known him for 20 years, called him warm and passionate about his work, and dismissed the piece as one-sided. Then she posted a letter from Sorkin himself, who said he had helped the writer build a distorted picture of the actor.
That is the friend who gets a middle finger and a kiss for winning the weekend. Fair enough: she did reply that he looked sad.
What comes next is the second weekend, 16–18 October. Other Mommy has to survive its D+ word of mouth, and The Social Reckoning has to prove $5.5 million was the floor. If the Reddit forecast is right and the horror drops 78%, everyone already knows who will be texting whom.
Read more: ‘Should’ve Been a Comedy’ — Jessica Chastain’s Other Mommy is catching heat