{"id":80056,"date":"2025-08-19T01:33:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T01:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/80056\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T01:33:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T01:33:08","slug":"why-sydney-sweeneys-americana-will-still-turn-a-profit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/80056\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Sydney Sweeney’s ‘Americana’ Will Still Turn a Profit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sydney Sweeney<\/a> may have great jeans, but she isn\u2019t having a great month. Her latest movie, Tony Tost\u2019s neo-Western \u201cAmericana<\/a>,\u201d had the kind of opening weekend at the box office<\/a> that makes casual observers think something is seriously wrong.<\/p>\n

The film<\/a> made just an estimated $500,000 in its opening weekend via Lionsgate<\/a>, good for 19th place on the week among domestic releases. With the studio opening the film somewhat wide on over 1,100 screens nationwide (that\u2019s a per-screen average of $436), as well as spending $3 million to acquire it out of SXSW back in 2023<\/a>, that\u2019s what we in the business generally call \u201cnot good.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Lionsgate isn\u2019t losing sleep (even if Sweeney is still rethinking the ad campaigns she chooses). In fact, the studio believes \u201cAmericana\u201d will turn an easy profit when all is said and done. <\/p>\n

\"Two<\/a> \"'Keeper'\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

We\u2019ve heard the studio spin before: box office opening weekend isn\u2019t what it used to be, and these movies are designed to turn a profit while looking at the long game of putting it on PVOD and licensing it to a streamer. That\u2019s typically the logic we hear when we\u2019re being convinced that audiences don\u2019t have superhero fatigue.<\/p>\n

While there wasn\u2019t enough spin in the world to save Lionsgate\u2019s \u201cBorderlands,\u201d<\/a> Lionsgate is in a different boat compared to other major studios. Despite Sweeney\u2019s star power, \u201cAmericana\u201d is not in the same category as one of the studio\u2019s major tentpoles, though it does have another one of those starring Sweeney, \u201cThe Housemaid,\u201d coming out this Christmas<\/a>, so we could be having a different conversation then. <\/p>\n

Part of what makes Lionsgate unique to other studios is that, in addition to the two or three franchise movies and a dozen or so other releases, Lionsgate also puts out as many as 30 to 40 small movies per year with limited marketing and a more targeted push under its Lionsgate Premiere Releasing banner. Some of those go direct-to-streaming, like an upcoming Netflix film called \u201cWar Machine,\u201d and others open in theaters and on digital day-and-date or after a 17-day theatrical window. <\/p>\n

Some of the more successful recent examples are \u201cSisu\u201d or \u201cFall,\u201d which each made $7.2 million domestic. There are many more you probably haven\u2019t heard of.<\/p>\n

\"Sisu\"\u2018Sisu\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAmericana\u201d fits into that business model, and as IndieWire has learned, as many as 95 percent of those movies do turn a profit after they\u2019ve run their course in theaters, PVOD, and SVOD. In the case of this film, Lionsgate acquired the movie for $3 million, but it also licensed \u201cAmericana\u201d internationally, so the studio is only holding the bag for about half of that, or in the ballpark of $1.5 million. The film\u2019s marketing \u2014 some of it theatrical trailers, most of it digital, or getting Sweeney to post on her Instagram next to photos of her in head-to-toe denim \u2014 tacks on about another $3 million.<\/p>\n

Time for some back of the napkin math: The studio expects the movie, from this point, to leg out to about $1.5 million in theaters (don\u2019t forget exhibitors take half of that box office haul), but it also expects to take in a few million from home entertainment sales, Pay-1 licensing to a streamer like Starz (now spun off from Lionsgate) or Netflix, or international windows. <\/p>\n

Putting it on as many as 1,100 screens even helps it create awareness down the road. And if a movie like this one day pops on Netflix\u2019s Top 10, it could even get a small financial boost, but it\u2019s unclear what Lionsgate\u2019s deal is in that regard. By the time all that is said and done (whenever that is), \u201cAmericana\u201d could be looking at a profit of about $1.5 million, which turns out was more or less by design.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s not confuse \u201cAmericana\u201d for being a hit. In an ideal world, \u201cAmericana\u201d would have a final box office at least twice of what it\u2019s now expected to reach, and so would the profit. Like \u201cSisu,\u201d which also opened wider and got a heftier marketing push, the studio believed \u201cAmericana\u201d had a little upside to it, what with the Sweeney of it all. And unlike most of their titles that get a 17-day window, \u201cAmericana\u201d will be in theaters exclusively for 30 days.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also surely not what the film\u2019s financiers, Bron, had in mind when \u201cAmericana\u201d was initially produced for around $9 million. Part of the reason the film has sat on the shelf for two years since it first opened at SXSW in 2023 is because Bron later that year declared bankruptcy. Frankly, it\u2019s fortunate this movie was released at all.<\/p>\n

But Lionsgate is pretty good at getting ancillary business from home entertainment and digital releases, tending to over index compared to what other studios can bring in at home. You tend to see action movies and genre movies do especially well after its theatrical run, a big part of the reason why Lionsgate keeps making movies with Jason Statham or Gerard Butler. <\/p>\n

But doing this one-for-you\/one-for-them model also keeps Lionsgate in good graces with someone like Sweeney when they want to work with her again for \u201cThe Housemaid.\u201d And American Eagle controversy be damned, one underwhelming box office opening isn\u2019t going to make Sweeney any less of a bankable star. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sydney Sweeney may have great jeans, but she isn\u2019t having a great month. Her latest movie, Tony Tost\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[31808,6471,49,48,75,1554,15895,337,8917],"class_list":{"0":"post-80056","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-americana","9":"tag-box-office","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-film","14":"tag-lionsgate","15":"tag-movies","16":"tag-sydney-sweeney"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}