{"id":88786,"date":"2025-08-24T03:53:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T03:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/88786\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T03:53:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T03:53:12","slug":"sydney-sweeneys-americana-director-defends-flop-after-box-office-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/88786\/","title":{"rendered":"Sydney Sweeney’s Americana director defends flop after box office crash"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sydney Sweeney<\/a>‘s Americana director Tony Tost said he feels his movie got ‘gobbled up by the zeitgeist,’ amid its commercial failure.<\/p>\n

Last month, Sydney starred in a viral ad for American Eagle, which provoked a social media meltdown as frenzied critics compared it to ‘Nazi propaganda’ for playing on the phrase ‘good genes’ with a blonde, blue-eyed star<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Americana bowed in theaters on August 15 made only $500,000 its opening weekend against a $9 million budget, via The Hollywood Reporter<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While the movie emerged as a damp squib at the box office, Sydney’s co-star Halsey<\/a> urged viewers to see it in spite of the ’24hr gossip tabloid denim bulls***.’<\/p>\n

The crime<\/a> comedy received a warmer response from the critics, with the New York Times<\/a> calling it a ‘slick and skillful debut feature’ and Variety<\/a> saying Tony’s ‘first feature arrives more polished than most filmmakers\u2019 third or fourth.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now Tony, who made his directorial debut with Americana, has defended the project as ‘a “hidden gem” type movie’ rather than a ‘blockbuster.’<\/p>\n

\"Sydney <\/p>\n

Sydney Sweeney ‘s Americana director Tony Tost said he feels his movie got ‘gobbled up by the zeitgeist,’ amid its commercial failure<\/p>\n

‘One of the great things about movies is that they outlive the zeitgeist into which they were released,’ he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.<\/p>\n

‘As someone whose first film sorta got gobbled up by the zeitgeist, I’ll be curious to see how it’ll stand up after this moment is over. Hopefully fairly well!’<\/p>\n

He shared that back in 2022, when he was documenting the post-production process of Americana on Letterboxd, he ‘knew I was creating a “hidden gem” type movie (as opposed to a blockbuster, or auteur masterpiece).’<\/p>\n

Americana premiered at SXSW in March 2023, four months before its production company Bron Studios filed for bankruptcy, and finally achieved a theatrical release on over 1,000 screens more than two years later this August.<\/p>\n

‘I’ve told industry people from before I made AMERICANA that my ideal directing career was to string together a series of minor gems,’ Tony wrote on X this week.\u00a0 ‘To just try to make a bunch of SUGARLAND EXPRESS and AMERICAN GRAFFITI type films without worrying about making a JAWS or STAR WARS.’<\/p>\n

He reflected: ‘One picture in — I don’t know if a minor gem career is feasible these days. I think I’ve got to swing either bigger or smaller. Excited for people to find AMERICANA in the days\/weeks\/months\/years to come. But also trying to internalize the many lessons learned from swing #1.’<\/p>\n

Americana stars Sydney as a waitress with a stammer who aspires to become a country singer, amid a cast that includes I, Tonya breakout Paul Walter Hauser, Grey’s Anatomy heartthrob Eric Dane, Red Rocket lead Simon Rex and Halsey.<\/p>\n

Tony posted his tweets on Thursday, the same day Halsey fired up her Insta Stories to exhort fans to see the ‘exceptional movie’ he had made with her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Americana <\/p>\n

Americana stars Sydney as a waitress with a stammer who aspires to become a country singer, amid a cast that includes I, Tonya breakout Paul Walter Hauser<\/p>\n

\"Last <\/p>\n

Last month, Sydney starred in a viral ad for American Eagle, which provoked a social media meltdown as frenzied critics compared it to ‘Nazi propaganda’\u00a0<\/p>\n

She hailed Tony as an ‘incredible artist’ whose ‘work and his vision are greater than the 24 hr gossip tabloid denim bulls***,’ insisting: ‘If you love cinema, than you should know that cinema comes first [sic]. This is cinema.’<\/p>\n

The American Eagle ad,\u00a0entitled Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans, shows its star buttoning up a set of denim trousers and offering a playful pun on the word ‘genes.’<\/p>\n

‘Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color…my genes are blue,’ the Sydney says.<\/p>\n

The campaign was met with an explosion of controversy<\/a>, as social media users feverishly accused the ad of being racist and flirting with eugenics in light of its star’s blonde-haired, azure-eyed appearance.<\/p>\n

Other viewers leapt to the busty bombshell’s defense, calling the blowback ‘unhinged’ and saying opponents of the ad were ‘reading too much into this.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

American Eagle insiders subsequently shared that about 70% of respondents to independent polling had a positive reaction to the promo, via\u00a0TMZ<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sydney Sweeney‘s Americana director Tony Tost said he feels his movie got ‘gobbled up by the zeitgeist,’ amid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,97,96,44402,1996,9298,478,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-88786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-dailymail","tag-entertainment","tag-halsey","tag-new-york-times","tag-sydney-sweeney","tag-tvshowbiz","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}