Sydney Sweeney has been the subject of a lot of controversies as of late. But what I want to focus on is how media outlets have been covering the release of her two new films, Americana and Eden.

Some background:

Americana is a genre film. It was shot and screened in 2023 to relatively positive reviews. The company that financed it, Bron, went bankrupt shortly after the film's screening. Due to this bankruptcy Lionsgate was able to acquire the rights to the film for cheap. While the film was made on a nine million dollar budget, Lionsgate purchased it for three million, with two million of that coming from international rights sales. Meaning that Lionsgate only spent one million acquiring the domestic distribution rights. In order to get more VOD sales and streaming deals, Lionsgate gave the film a small theatrical release with next to nothing in marketing.

Eden premiered at TIFF in 2024. Directed by Ron Howard the film also stars Jude Law, Vanessa Kirby, Ana De Armas, and Daniel Bruhl along with Sweeney. The film was financed at a net cost of 35 million dollars. It received mixed to negative reviews and only Netflix was willing to purchase it. Ron Howard opted to go with a smaller distributor, Vertical (who are mostly known for straight-to-video trash but have been slowly building themselves as a more legitimate art-house distributor), due to wanting a theatrical release which no one wanted to give the film. Vertical made a deal for less than 20 million dollars for the film.

Now, each distributor had their reasons for acquiring each film. Lionsgate saw a cheap film with a rising star which was well-received. It was an easy profit for them and helps build up their library as they are looking to be sold off. Vertical, having released last year's acclaimed The Order, is trying to build a filmmaker friendly reputation. Buying a non-commercial film with a high profile cast and a high profile director gives them more exposure and allows them to be more in the conversation for prestige filmmaking.

The film's financiers, however, are the money losers in both situations. Whether or not the distributors lost money doesn't really matter. Money losers are money losers and these films should be described as such.

And this is where it gets weird.

In the wake of Americana's opening we got two different articles about the film's box office. One from Deadline and one from IndieWire. Covering for the film, arguing that they weren't money losers for the reasons I myself just gave earlier. This weekend, as Eden just released, Deadline releases yet another article defending the film's performance.

This is too much coverage for these films that no one saw. Comparable films never get articles like this. So what's going on?

Here's my conspiracy theory. Sydney Sweeney is friends with Jeff Bezos. She attended his wedding and a few months ago there were heavily circulated rumors about her being the new Bond girl a franchise that Bezos unfortunately owns.

The media outlets that cover the entertainment industry: Variety, Deadline, Hollywood Reporter, and IndieWire are all owned by the same person: Jay Penske. Penske and Bezos run in the same circles, rich guy circles, and have attended philanthropic events at the same time. What I believe is happening is that Bezos is using his influence and connections for these outlets to write out positive headlines for Sweeney, due to her controversies, to create a more flattering image of her and her career.

It's odd, to say the least.

As of July 1st, all articles are behind a paywall. This includes all historical articles (going back decades, apparently), including any and all InternetArchive copies -- so RIP every Wikipedia link that has ever referenced them as a source. A free-registration option gets you access to 3 articles per month. A proper subscription is $230/year.

A freelance journalist who has been published with them in the past had this to say about it, which I thought was enlightening and, well, thoughtful.

On SpaceNews going paywalled, and the broader disregard for archiving in journalism.

I reviewed his stuff a bit, and I like his writing, so I added his RSS link to my feed (while simultaneously deleting my SpaceNews link), and on a whim--because he has his email right there on his "About" page, I emailed him to tell him that I liked his article and I just replaced SpaceNews with him.

Like, an hour later, I received a response from him, reminding me that he focuses primarily on the Moon, and that he loves RSS and is happy to hear people still use it.

And it was so refreshing to connect--almost directly--with an actual human being writing news.

Just thought I'd share.

Oh, I also want to comment on that price ... $230/year is--IMHO--wildly overpriced. But almost immediately, it also occurred to me that they probably lost more readership going from $0/year to $1/year, than going from $1 to $230 so, you know, business-wise, I suppose it's not exactly a horrible decision.

But I'd like to hear other people's opinions on that price, too.