Made for a reported $25 million, Sony’s “Anyone But You” broke the supposed curse of the romcom not performing at the box office (and only working on streaming) this year. Slowly but surely, the Glenn Powell and Sydney Sweeney starring film crossed $189 million at the worldwide box office this past weekend. Nearly two months after its release (December 22), the film is still in theaters and slowly chugging away at the box office. It’s unclear if $200 million is in reach, given it only takes in a couple hundred thousand each weekend (at least domestically), and the digital release was announced today for tomorrow (February 20).
The film has reportedly broken a record for the highest-grossing live-action Shakespeare adaptation (“Much Ado About Nothing”), and during a new interview with E! News, Sydney Sweeney danced around the idea of a potential sequel.
“I can’t actually reveal all of my secrets,” she told E! News during the Madame Web premiere on February 12, “but Glen and I—I mean, I was talking to him this morning. We’re talking about stuff.”
As for Powell, he responded by commenting on E! News Instagram post with a “lips are sealed” emoji.
Directed by Will Gluck and loosely based on the aforementioned Shakespeare play, “Anyone But You” centers on Bea (Sydney Sweeney) and Ben (Glen Powell), a couple who look like the perfect couple. But after an amazing first date, something happens that turns their fiery hot attraction ice cold—until they find themselves unexpectedly thrust together at a destination wedding in Australia. So they do what any two mature adults would do: pretend to be a couple.
For years, when the romcom seemingly migrated to streaming, performing super well on Netflix and the likes, the conventional wisdom, after a few related flops, was that the rom-com genre was done at the box office. Obviously, the modest success of “Anyone But You” flies in the face of that thinking, but is there an appetite big enough for a sequel? Has “Anyone But You” truly broken down that curse, or is it a one-off? Time will tell, but in a very recent day and age when no one seems to be doing super well at the box office, small victories are evidently worth celebrating.