Sydney Sweeney seemed to be soaring last year, with movies such as Anyone But You and Immaculate scoring strong reviews and decent box office results. However, her recent run has been anything but successful in financial terms, as this weekend’s release of Christy is expected to be the actress’ third movie to make less than $2 million on its opening weekend.
Christy is a biopic of female boxing champion Christy Martin, which also stars Ben Foster, Katy O’Brian, Jess Gabor, Ethan Embry, and Merritt Wever. The film has floundered with critics, earning a 66% score on Rotten Tomatoes despite receiving Oscar buzz months before its release. However, audiences have been incredibly positive about Sweeney’s “phenomenal” performance…there just have not been an awful lot of people actually going to see the movie.
The main issue with Christy is that it is not a movie with mass appeal, and that means there will be a lot of people happy to skip the theater trip and wait for the film to arrive on streaming in the next few months. That is the great problem facing cinemas right now, with movies like Christy not having the kind of pull required to get audiences into cinemas when streaming releases come so quickly afterward.
‘Christy’ Is Another Knockout Blow to Sweeney’s Box Office Charms
In 2023, Sydney Sweeney appeared to be ready to really break out in the industry. While she had appeared in big TV shows like Euphoria, her movie reach had been low-key. However, the release of her frisky comedy Anyone But You landed a huge $218.9 million haul. That was followed by the ultimately disappointing Madame Web – although it is hard for anyone to blame the disastrous box office of Sony’s Marvel movie on Sweeney – and the more impressive horror movie Immaculate in 2024. The latter movie opened with a $5 million weekend, and grossed $35 million on the back of a $9 million budget.
However, after this, her next theatrical releases, Americana and Ron Howard’s Eden became box office disasters. Americana, which also had a $9 million budget, made less than $500,000 at the box office. If that was not bad enough, Eden followed almost immediately and turned its $35 million budget into a $2.5 million return. Now, Christy has made it three in a row, with the film expected to make just $1.25 million over the weekend.
Sweeney’s year has also been marred by controversy over her collaboration with American Eagle jeans, something that in the last week has resurfaced when the actress ducked questions about the outrage over the ad campaign. Then there was her bathwater-infused soap release, which just brought more negativity to the actress online.
Sweeney is now looking to round out the year with a box office win when The Housemaid is released in December. Starring Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar, the Paul Feig movie has one major hurdle in that it is going up against James Cameron’s mighty Avatar: Fire and Ash. It is not hard to see how that battle is going to end, but hopefully the movie can give audiences an alternative they can elevate beyond Sweeney’s recent movies and stop her doing a connect four of box office failures.
- Release Date
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November 7, 2025
- Runtime
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135 minutes
- Director
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David Michôd
- Producers
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Brent Stiefel, Kerry Kohansky-Roberts, Sydney Sweeney, Teddy Schwarzman, John Friedberg, Michael Heimler, Justin Lothrop, Brad Zimmerman, David Levine