For much of 2025, it felt as though Sydney Sweeney was a star without a safe harbor. After a meteoric rise, her “it-girl” status was systematically dismantled by a series of high-profile box office failures and a social media presence that became a cultural lightning rod.
The timeline suggests that the commercial “flashpoint” occurred long before the theatrical bleeding began. It started on July 23, 2025, when a single ad campaign for American Eagle became the center of a partisan culture war that seemed to shadow every project that followed.
A play on words between “jeans” and “genes” was interpreted by critics as having eugenicist undertones, sparking accusations that the blonde-haired, blue-eyed star was being positioned as a symbol of genetic superiority. Sweeney’s breathy voiceover in the ad—explaining how “genes are passed down from parents to offspring”—only fueled the fire.
The controversy took an even more political turn when Donald Trump praised the campaign on Truth Social, calling it the “hottest ad out there” and celebrating Sweeney as a “registered Republican.” This endorsement turned a fashion ad into a battleground, forcing a vocal segment of her audience into an “icy” standoff with the star.
What followed was a winter of professional discontent that seemed to validate the internet’s harshest predictions. Less than a month after the ad launched, on August 15, her film Americana debuted to a dismal $840,000 in 1,100 theaters.
The bleeding continued just a week later on August 22, when the survival thriller Eden opened to a stagnant $1.04 million. These back-to-back failures signaled a terrifying trend for the industry: her massive television stardom was not translating to ticket sales.
The situation reached a breaking point on November 7, when the boxing biopic Christy debuted with just $1.3 million across 2,000 theaters. It was one of the worst wide-release starts in history, but the real blow came on November 19, when the film set an all-time record for the worst second-weekend drop at 92%, effectively ending its theatrical life.
By December, the narrative was set: Sweeney was a “career-risk” whose 15 minutes had likely expired. In an attempt to address the fallout in a GQ cover story, Sweeney admitted that her silence on the “Great Jeans” controversy had likely “widened the divide, not closed it.”
However, the start of 2026 has offered a jarring reality check to the online funeral. Released on December 19th, The Housemaid has become a genuine theatrical phenomenon.
Against a $35 million budget, the psychological thriller has already grossed over $133 million worldwide in just over two weeks. The success was so definitive that yesterday, January 6, Lionsgate officially greenlit a sequel, The Housemaid’s Secret, with Sweeney returning to star and executive produce.
It is the win she desperately needed—a reminder that while the internet was dissecting her “genes,” the actual movie-going public was still waiting for her to lead a franchise.
As the numbers climb, they pose the most difficult question of her career. Does this $133 million victory mean the internet has finally forgiven Sydney Sweeney, or does it simply prove that a movie star no longer needs the internet’s permission to succeed?
