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.

Nearly two years ago, I made a post titled "On the superhero question" and three years ago I made a retrospective on the box office since theaters closed in 2020.

So I figured it was time for an update.

Re-reading those posts makes me realize how optimistic the theatrical landscape seemed in the wake of Barbenheimer. I don't think I was alone in that; I think the industry felt optimism from that cultural moment as well. That same year was when superhero films imploded, so there was this idea that audiences wanted "real" films. They wanted films by "real" directors, and now there was some discernment from audiences. Grouping both Barbie and Mario, it spoke to the value that other IP now has.

The landscape became much more depressing in 2024. It seems like the idea of audiences flocking to other types of films did not happen. After consistent growth, the box office fell in 2024 from 2023. I remember the panic that the industry felt after both The Fall Guy and Furiosa: A Mad Max Story flopped at the box office. But Inside Out 2, Deadpool and Wolverine breaking out balanced out those disappointments.

Speaking of Deadpool and Wolverine, I remember my prediction of the film being that it would be the lowest-grossing of the Deadpool franchise. Not only that, but I predicted that Joker 2 would outgross it, and we all know how that played out.

Because Deadpool and Wolverine did so well, it delayed the narrative that had been forming throughout 2023, the "superhero fatigue" narrative. It wasn't until now that the narrative is back, and it seems like Deadpool and Wolverine was more of an exception. The film needed 20 years of nostalgia to power it to those numbers. Something under-discussed about D&W's performance is that it was more domestic-heavy than a lot of billion-dollar MCU films (47% DOM split when many of them were in the 30% range throughout the 2010s). Spider-Man: No Way Home also had a split in the 40s, which perhaps was an omen for what was to come.

There were other overperformers throughout 2024, don't get me wrong. Wicked, making over 400M DOM and 700M WW, was not something people were expecting early on. Mufasa: The Lion King still made over 700M WW despite a mediocre reception and a "why would you make this?" issue. But there was certainly a depth issue. Fewer films hit the 100M DOM mark in 2024 than in 2023, and the rest of the top 100 films made less in 2024 than in 2023. It did feel like many films underperformed or did not reach their full potential, which would have helped out the overall box office. Many horror films like Abigail, Night Swim, MaXXXine, could have done better but didn't. Gladiator II would have likely done better if it had been better received. Twisters and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice did well, but didn't get the late legs that would have driven it to 300M totals. Bad Boys: Ride or Die decreased from the previous film. Red One and Bob Marley: One Love didn't crawl past the 100M DOM mark. Little things like that that add up.

So how's 2025 looking so far?

In short, not great. We're currently lagging behind 2024 during the same calendar year. Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine contributed over 600M DOM each, while our highest-grossing film this year so far is still A Minecraft Movie, and that didn't even hit 500M DOM (it probably would have if word of mouth wasn't horrendous). We do have three big films left for the year: Zootopia 2, Wicked: For Good, and Avatar: Ash and Fire. All three are potential 500M DOM grossers, although Avatar will be making a majority of its money in the 2026 calendar year. There are also smaller-scale studio films hoping to break out, such as The Running Man, Tron: Ares, and Predator: Badlands.

The issue, though, is that many of these films can underperform, and that's been a common theme this past year. The well-received Thunderbolts could not get in the black, and the much-anticipated Fantastic Four is going to barely break even theatrically. Even Superman, with its great legs, will end up below what many superhero films did during the peak, even mediocre or lesser-known superheroes. It does seem like the box office will continue to collapse since nothing is filling that Disney-sized void. Outside of superhero films, Lilo and Stitch didn't perform as well as it could have and neither did Minecraft.

So it's kind of grim. I mean, in reality, movie-going reached its peak in 2002. It has been declining in admissions ever since. So it was perhaps naive to think that the growth we experienced from 2021 to 2023 would continue. But it really seems like the domestic box office will continue to decline, and the international box office has collapsed for a lot of Hollywood films, specifically comic book films. So we're entering a very different landscape, a much more muted world for films from now on. And it will likely continue to shrink.

Now markets shift, they can shift back up. The international market can be brought up again (Superhero movies used to always play better with domestic audiences). But I'm certainly not as optimistic as I once was.