Elbowing its way into multiplexes during the ultracrowded, ultracompetitive Christmas release corridor, the R-rated romantic comedy Anyone But You seemed poised to become anything but a blockbuster. It squared off against big-budget studio fare (Wonka, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom), prestige schlock (The Boys in the Boat), A24’s wrestling biopic The Iron Claw, and the movie-musical iteration of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer-winning novel The Color Purple. Meanwhile, the $25 million Sydney Sweeney–Glen Powell two-hander would flourish or perish based on the quality of its dick jokes and the blue-flame sexual chemistry of its almost always scantily clad leads. More pressing: Rom-com was considered a moribund genre outside of streaming hits like Always Be My Maybe and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before — and to a lesser extent, outliers that harnessed higher-wattage star power, like The Lost City (Channing Tatum and Sandra Bullock) and Ticket to Paradise (George Clooney and Julia Roberts), which both hit theater screens in 2022. A suite of raunchy R-rated comedies from last summer, meanwhile, had done less than gangbusters at the box office. And mediocre reviews in conjunction with a so-so B+ Cinemascore hadn’t exactly primed the cinematic pump for Anyone But You.
As almost everyone expected, Anyone But You landed with a thud, arriving in fifth place among new movies and pulling in a mere $6 million over its debut weekend. But then, in a way almost no one could have predicted, the Sony-distributed comedy started kicking its higher-profile, more expensively marketed competition’s ass. In its second weekend of release — in defiance of the steep ticket-buying drop-off that greets almost every theatrical release — ABY nabbed 45 percent more market share. Then in its third week, Anyone But You ticket sales surged again, surpassing the $125 million-budgeted Timothée Chalamet vehicle Wonka to climb to No. 1 at the box office.
The Will Gluck–directed fake-dating romp–cum–loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing then crossed $100 million worldwide this month to become the highest-grossing R-rated romantic comedy since the Zellweger threequel Bridget Jones’s Baby in 2016. In one of Hollywood’s most important metrics, ABY’s box-office “multiple†(the ratio of its total domestic gross versus its opening-weekend haul) stands at 11.8: the best for any live-action wide release since theaters opened in the post-pandemic era (Barbie, the most successful movie of 2023, by contrast, only had a multiple of 4.9). This past weekend, it managed the seemingly impossible again, increasing yet another 3 percent in “holdover†territories (i.e., the countries where it was already screening) from last weekend for a cumulative gross of $126.5 million. Internationally, the movie is crushing it too — $55.4 million of that total coming from outside North America — playing on 6,000 screens in 48 markets with still more overseas territories being added.
Inevitably, headlines like “Sydney Sweeney Declares ‘Rom Coms Are Back Baby!’†and “Hollywood needs to reinvest in romantic comedies†are now attempting to parse that ticket-sales outcome for meaning. But in the view of an executive from a rival studio, the calculus is pretty simple. “To be clear, the movie didn’t ‘open,’ but word-of-mouth is so strong it keeps going in a very uncrowded marketplace,†this person says. “People genuinely like the movie, and people love ‘good’ romantic comedies. There has been such a dearth since The Lost City, so it makes sense.â€
While the rom-com comeback narrative continues to gain cultural traction, however, Danielle Misher, co-head of global marketing for Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, says Anyone But You’s unlikely journey to blockbusterdom benefitted from a singular confluence of factors that includes — but is hardly limited to — its R-rated genre trappings.
Are They or Aren’t They?
For months ahead of Sony unveiling footage from the film, introduced by stars-on-the-rise Sweeney (Euphoria, The White Lotus) and Powell (Top Gun: Maverick) at Las Vegas’s CinemaCon, the co-leads had become much-discussed objects of tabloid scrutiny thanks to rumors of their on-set romance. Photos by Aussie paparazzi and also, more crucially, social-media posts from the actors began emerging from the Anyone But You set highlighting Powell and Sweeney’s frequent physical proximity to one another (even when cameras weren’t rolling), their doe-eyed mutual admiration, and what seemed to be a kind of suspiciously pheromonal rapport.
At the time, of course, Sweeney was engaged to her boyfriend of four years and Powell was seriously involved with his girlfriend of three. Chattering-class consumers of “Page Six†and DeuxMoi began combing Instagram slideshows for hidden evidence of a real-life hookup — a perception not exactly discouraged when Powell’s model girlfriend Gigi Paris was widely reported to have unfollowed Sweeney on Instagram following a trip to visit him on the ABY set last March.
The trail of tabloid bread crumbs around the purported liaison stoked prerelease awareness among its crucial 18–24 demographic, right through ABY’s official promotion cycle, by which point a Mr. & Mrs. Smith–style talking point had firmly affixed itself to the film. (Powell and Paris ultimately broke up; by all public accounts, Sweeney and her restaurateur-producer fiancé Jonathan Davino remain in a committed relationship; the stars continue to deny having dated.)
The upshot: By the time Anyone But You arrived onscreen, certain scenes landed with a sense of cultural déjà vu, having been already processed and served up by the celebrity industrial complex. “You can’t combat it … So we embraced it,†Gluck told The Hollywood Reporter. “It got so broad, the studio would call me and have a question about a piece of clothing. And I was like, ‘You saw that because of paparazzi because we never put that in our movie.’â€
The TikTok Effect
Set around an Australian destination wedding, the “I hate you — no, I actually love you!†comedy features the Natasha Bedingfield 2004 hit “Unwritten†as a “serenity song†for Powell’s character, palliative music he plays through headphones when facing his fear of flying. The interminably cheery bop plays and is sung at key moments in Anyone But You, but it’s showcased most prominently over its credits-sequence montage. Multiple characters sing “Unwritten†in different locations from the movie, footage filmed at the conclusion of production each day over ABY’s 41-day shoot (1998’s There’s Something About Mary uses The Foundations’ “Build Me Up Buttercup†over its credits in a not dissimilar way).
“Unwritten†became a viral sensation when audience members began filming themselves singing it while ebulliently exiting multiplex screenings of Anyone But You. To date, the #Unwritten hashtag has clocked 381 million views and logged more 115,000 videos. The #anyonebutyou hashtag boasts a mighty 1.5 billion views. “People on TikTok have been filming themselves literally dancing out of the theater, and every few days Sydney might repost some of her favorites from TikTok, and that has helped it turn into this viral event that is so wholesome,†says writer-director Michael Mohan, who cast Sweeney in his 2021 Amazon Prime Video erotic thriller The Voyeurs and directs her again in the upcoming psychological horror film Immaculate, which she also co-produced. Adds Misher, “It shows the power of a good ending. People are walking out of the theater so happy and they have something they want to share.â€
Of Anyone But You’s marquee draws, Sweeney is the more online of the two, with nearly 17 million Instagram followers and 1.7 million TikTok followers. Mohan points out the 26-year-old Emmy-winning actress also executive-produced ABY and is developing a reputation as a kind of Gen-Z lightning rod. “Now having worked with Sydney as a producer, I think she just has her finger on the pulse of what her generation wants to see,†he adds. “And I get the sense when she’s making a movie or when she’s choosing to make a movie in a producer capacity, that she is just making films that she herself would want to see. And that’s how they’re connecting.â€
Girl-Group Viewings
To be sure, over the production and press cycle for Anyone But You, Powell’s public profile has rapidly grown, with most reviews for his Venice Film Festival–anointed comedy Hit Man (which premiered at Sundance this week and will arrive on Netflix in June) proclaiming him an impending A-lister. Judging by his derrière-revealing Men’s Health cover story, the actor is not against weaponizing his square-jawed good looks, washboard abs, and all-American affect to draw in the movie’s under-30 female audience.
More broadly, however, anecdotal evidence suggests that groups of young women wanting to expose their friends to Anyone But You’s communal theatrical joys have been responsible for the movie’s substantial week-by-week ticket-sales uptick and strong holdover appeal. (In recent months, Warner Bros.’ Barbie and the October concert film Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour put additional rear ends in seats this way too.) According to Misher, ABY’s R rating for “language throughout, sexual content, and brief graphic nudity†has also been an asset rather than a hindrance — particularly for drawing in the under-30 set who may have consumed a steady diet of rom-coms on streaming platforms but never encountered one aimed at their target demo inside a cineplex auditorium. “They haven’t been served much of this theatrically,†she says. “And the R rating is important because it was something new for them.â€
With every movie success, Hollywood looks for teachable moments: ways to carry moneymaking momentum forward into the future. And Anyone But You’s funky path to financial liftoff is all but sure to usher in an era of genre reassessment while impacting green-light conversations in studio executive C-suites for years to come. “Those who thought the hard R-rated rom-com was relegated to the discount bin should think again,†says Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “Despite lukewarm reviews from critics, audiences are clearly embracing Anyone But You. And creatives and studios alike should take notice.â€