5 Reasons Why Sydney Sweeney’s Christy Flopped At The Box Office

This fall season is proving to be a tough arena for combat sports biopics at the box office. Last month saw “The Smashing Machine,” which starred Dwayne Johnson as MMA fighter Mark Kerr, disappoint with a $20 million global haul against a budget of $50 million. Now, Sydney Sweeney’s “Christy” has crashed to the mat with an opening weekend of just $1.3 million, despite debuting on more than 2000 screens. 

Sweeney alluded to the low numbers in an Instagram post, saying, “We don’t always just make art for numbers, we make it for impact. And ‘Christy’ has been the most impactful project of my life.” She plays Christy Martin, who became one of the first female boxing stars during the ’90s and was elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2020. Behind closed doors, though, Martin was the victim of domestic abuse, and in 2010, she was shot, stabbed, and left for dead by her husband after telling him that she wanted a divorce. 

Fortunately, Martin survived the attack, and Sweeney said she signed on to the film in the hope that it might save lives. “If ‘Christy’ gave even one woman the courage to take her first step toward safety,” she wrote, “then we will have succeeded.”

There’s been some speculation that the movie’s performance was impacted by a recent media furore over American Eagle’s “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans” ad campaign. However, the truth is that there are plenty of other factors that better explain why “Christy” flopped at the box office.

“Christy” was produced by indie studio Elevation Pictures and its parent company, Black Bear Pictures. Founded in 2011, Black Bear started as a production company but in 2023 began branching out into the distribution side, handling overseas releases for movies like “Longlegs” and “Conclave.” However, “Christy” marks the first time that Black Bear has ever distributed a movie in the United States. 

Without major studio backing, smaller movies can often struggle with the costs and logistics of a major theatrical release. For comparison, 2019’s “Fighting With My Family,” a lowish-budget sports biopic starring Florence Pugh as former WWE professional wrestler Paige (now wrestling under the name Saraya), was picked up by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures on the production side and partnered with several established distributors for its release. That movie ended up grossing $41.5 million worldwide, more than twice as much as “The Smashing Machine.” (“Fighting With My Family” also featured Dwayne Johnson, though in a much smaller role than you’d guess from looking at the posters.)

It doesn’t seem like getting “Christy” on screens was an issue for Black Bear, given the scale of the movie’s opening weekend release, but the studio did struggle to get audiences into those screens. It’s possible that this was down to focusing on the wrong markets, but the biggest problem seems to be that audiences were unaware that the movie even existed.

The problems with the marketing for “Christy” start with the title. While it’s common for biopics to simply go with the central subject’s name for their title, that’s typically most effective when the subject already has major name recognition. The approach made sense for “Elvis,” Frida,” “Oppenheimer,” “Malcolm X,” “Lincoln,” and “Jackie.” But when the central figure is relatively unknown, titles benefit from a little creativity. “Fighting With My Family” is a good example, as is 2023’s “The Iron Claw.” And while “The Smashing Machine” had its problems at the box office, at least A24 had the good sense not to just call it “Mark.” 

Black Bear only released one full trailer and one poster for “Christy,” and if you never saw either of them, you’re definitely not alone. The marketing campaign seemed to lean heavily on Sweeney herself doing a press tour (arranging interviews is cheaper than buying ad space), including a cover feature for GQ. But, as noted by The Wrap, the only quote from that interview that got any circulation on social media was a fairly neutral comment responding to the jeans controversy

The case for Sydney Sweeney as a box office draw primarily comes from her 2023 fake-relationship romcom “Anything But You,” a two-hander with fellow rising star Glen Powell. That movie was a huge big-screen hit (pretty rare for rom-coms these days), grossing more than $220 million against a $25 million production budget. But for Sweeney, it’s increasingly starting to look like an anomaly.

Sweeney rose to fame on the hit HBO series “Euphoria,” which went on an extended hiatus after season 2 ended in February 2022 (it will finally return for season 3 next year). While the show sat in limbo, several cast members — including Sweeney, Zendaya, Jacob Elordi, and Hunter Schafer — used its success as a springboard for big-screen stardom. But while some have managed to establish a firm foothold, Sweeney has been stumbling.

“Christy” marks the fourth box office flop for Sweeney since the release of “Anyone But You,” with the modestly profitable horror movie “Immaculate” being her only other success story. Other theatrical releases — the much-mocked “Madame Web,” the long-delayed “Americana,” and Ron Howard’s survival thriller “Eden” — have all flopped. This may mostly be a case of badly-chosen projects (the aforementioned movies all have poor-to-mixed reviews), but it also casts doubt on Sweeney’s power as a box office draw.

If one thing could have possibly saved “Christy,” it would have been rave reviews. In today’s movie landscape, a Rotten Tomatoes score can be make-or-break, especially for smaller movies. Box office success stories “Fighting With My Family” and “The Iron Claw” hold scores of 93% and 89%, respectively. And with awards bodies being especially favorable towards biopics (hence the rush of them around this time of year), Black Bear may have been hoping to pick up some Oscars buzz for “Christy.”

That’s not looking likely, though. With 146 reviews in, “Christy” has a score of 66% on Rotten Tomatoes, which just isn’t enough to draw out potential moviegoers who might have been on the fence about seeing it. While Sweeney’s performance was praised even in many of the negative reviews, the general consensus is that the biopic is simply too generic, pedestrian, and by-the-numbers to muster much emotional investment. The Boston Globe‘s Odie Henderson calls the script “shockingly inept” and says the movie “turn[s] Martin’s inspirational story into a Lifetime movie replete with cheap attempts at stand-up and cheer moments.”

One final problem for “Christy” is the fact that it debuted alongside several other new movies, with enough thematic overlap to tempt away potential audiences. For action-oriented moviegoers who might have been interested in the boxing scenes, there’s “Predator: Badlands,” which dominated the box office over the weekend. For fans of the ‘Women Going Through It’ genre, there’s Lynne Ramsay’s “Die My Love,” starring Jennifer Lawrence as a young mother coping with postpartum depression. And there was another biopic with themes of female empowerment that opened in theaters over the weekend: “Sarah’s Oil,” a faith-based drama about the life of Sarah Rector, which grossed $4.5 million in its debut.

September to early November is typically the friendliest time period for biographical dramas, far enough away from the summer rush and with a window for success before the cavalcade of holiday movies arrives. But unfortunately, not every movie gets to be a champion.