Given that Mama and Zero Dark Thirty weren’t exactly sold on the back of the woman who stars in both of them, headlines such as “Chastain films take top 2 spots at box office” feel like a bit of an exaggeration.

(The real story for this weekend, it seems to me, is the failure of The Last Stand to draw the Expendables old-dude audience back to the megaplex, especially when it’s a far more successful and entertaining project than either of Sylvester Stallone’s exercises in thick-necked self-love.)

Mama made $28.1 million; Zero Dark Thirty, 17.6 million. Third-place Silver Linings Playbook, presumably bolstered by all those wildly unwarranted Oscar nominations, made just $11.4 million. (The Last Stand opened in tenth place with just $6.3 million despite being the best action movie released in a good long while, demonstrating that the world has gone insane.)

Still: Two movies starring the same person topped the charts this weekend, which by the laws of Hollywood mints Chastain as a geniuine box-office star. In the linked piece, CP writer Jake Coyle even mentions how bizarre this situation is — she’s always specialized in character work in idiosyncratic projects, rather than chasing blockbuster wannabes; The Help is her only project to actively court mainstream success.

The best thing about this? Although she’s now officially a marketable actress, we will not be seeing her turning up in Trans4mers or Fast & Furious 7 or Hansel, Gretel and a Suspiciously Red-Headed Goldilocks. She’s too smart for that — and way too talented. This just means the directors Chastain wants to work with will have an easier time getting their funding together — as it should be.

(A portion of this blog post was financially supported by the Association to Cast Jessica Chastain in Everything.)