It was only two years ago that Sydney Sweeney was tipped as Hollywood’s next huge female movie star. The box office success of Anyone But You suggested that audiences were keen on watching more movies with her at the center; this was also the belief of her co-star Glen Powell, who followed up the film with a huge hit in Twisters.
However, Sweeney’s post-Anyone But You big screen career didn’t lead to immediate success. She was part of Sony’s notorious Marvel bomb, Madame Web, and could only really point to her low-budget 2024 horror film Immaculate as a “hit” with its $34.8 million gross. 2025 became a chance to really prove herself as a new box office star.
She’s now done that at last with The Housemaid becoming Sweeney’s highest-grossing movie as a lead. But it came after a series of flops that brought on more negative headlines and questions about audiences’ interest in her, making the journey to this record-breaking success quite impressive.
Sydney Sweeney’s 2025 Began With Three Straight Box Office Disappointments
2025 was the busiest year for Sweeney’s career, as she had five very different films released. The first, Echo Valley, was a straight-to-streaming thriller co-starring Julianne Moore for Apple, so it didn’t get a theatrical release and a chance to factor into the 28-year-old’s box office history.
Instead, she had a Quentin Tarantino-esque crime thriller in Americana and Ron Howard’s star-studded true-story survival film in Eden come out in August. She then headlined the Christy Martin boxing biopic Christy in November with hopes of landing an Oscar nomination for her performance.
With Sweeney involved in each, there was some optimism that she could help draw in more business for smaller features that tend to get overlooked at the theaters nowadays. She could not.
Americana only made $500,000 in its opening weekend, and Lionsgate didn’t report any additional box office earnings after this. Next, Eden made just $2.8 million by the time it finished its box office run. Christy followed this up with a worse result, $1.9 million, and didn’t really break into awards conversations that seemed realistic after its festival debut.
No matter how you want to slice it, these results are not great. None of these movies were ever meant to be huge hits at the box office, that’s true, but surely the studios involved hoped for a bit stronger outing given Sweeney’s profile. If that was going to be the case, though, the respective studios would’ve needed to actually market the films in some capacity.
Lionsgate sat on Americana for over a year after buying it in 2024 (a full year after its festival debut). Vertical Entertainment waited 10 months to buy Eden after a mixed response from its Cannes launch and then quietly put it in theaters four months later without any real marketing push. Black Bear acted the best of Sweeney’s studio partners, buying Christy before it premiered and putting it in over 2,000 theaters (before pulling it after two weeks).
While I never looked at the performances of Americana, Eden, and Christy as Sweeney’s fault, this string of flops brought bad press, became tied to some of her recent controversies, and even created questions about whether The Housemaid would falter, too, and end the young star’s year on a down note.
Why The Housemaid Was A Hit For Sydney Sweeney
The Housemaid has been a massive success for everyone involved, especially Sweeney. It has made $249 million worldwide after being in theaters for just over a month. This has come on the back of incredible legs at the domestic box office (it’s yet to have a weekend drop of over 27.8%) and has found more attention internationally.
There are several reasons why Sweeney found such a huge hit with this film. For starters, Lionsgate viewed The Housemaid as a major release and treated it as such. It had a big marketing campaign and has proven to be the perfect counter-programming to Avatar: Fire and Ash, targeting female moviegoers with its erotic thriller story and easy-to-look-at cast.
This was a similar playbook as Anyone But You took in 2023. And after seeing how well it worked for Sony, it was smart of Lionsgate to follow suit. There’s clearly space for a Sweeney-led romance movie in December every so often that can leg itself to a strong final performance.
Another point in The Housemaid‘s favor was its source material. It’s based on the Freida McFadden book of the same name that went viral on BookTok previously. There were plenty of readers who were always going to want to see how the movie tackled the novel. And with Sweeney, Amanda Seyfried, and Brandon Sklenar at the center and Paul Feig behind the camera, it had all the pieces to be a well-received mini-blockbuster.
The latter aspect shouldn’t be overlooked, either. The Housemaid‘s reviews were generally positive, earning it a 73% on Rotten Tomatoes. That told interested viewers that it was a “good” movie that was worth seeing. Americana (63%), Eden (58%), and Christy (67%) had more mixed reviews, which may have made them feel less necessary to rush out to see in theaters to some.
Meanwhile, The Housemaid‘s audience reactions have been extremely positive (92% on Rotten Tomatoes). This brought it strong word of mouth, and explains why it has kept delivering at the box office. Sweeney’s movie is clearly working for its intended audience, and since they know it is out there without any real competition to steal its thunder, the results make sense.
Sweeney may not deserve the blame for the disappointments she experienced earlier in 2025, but she does deserve some of the credit for The Housemaid‘s success. It proves audiences are interested in her and will go to theaters to see her movies when they fall into specific genres. The movie might not have had this success if another under-30 actress tackled the lead role instead.
What The Housemaid’s Success Means For Sydney Sweeney’s Future
Now that she’s back to her box office winning ways, it’ll be interesting to see how Sweeney’s next movies perform. She doesn’t have any movies with confirmed 2026 release dates currently, so we may get a small break from her on the big screen (beyond a rumored cameo in The Devil Wears Prada 2). That could be good. Sweeney won’t risk becoming overexposed and can figure out how she wants to build off The Housemaid‘s success.
This will include returning for The Housemaid 2, which is in development. There’s no official release date, but it won’t arrive until 2027 at best. She’s got many other projects in the works to keep her busy until then, including a Kim Novak biopic, the live-action Gundam, the video game adaptation Split Fiction, and some smaller independent films.
The important thing to keep in mind going forward is that not every movie Sweeney stars in will be a massive box office success. Some won’t be designed to do so. But for titles like The Housemaid’s Secret, Gundam, and Split Fiction, their ties to IP will bring those expectations. So long as those films keep hitting, Sydney Sweeney will further solidify her standing as an emerging Hollywood box office star.
- Release Date
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December 19, 2025
- Runtime
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131 Minutes
- Director
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Paul Feig
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
