By SONIA HORON, US SENIOR SHOWBUSINESS REPORTER and SAMEER SURI, US SENIOR SHOWBUSINESS REPORTER
Sydney Sweeney has suffered back-to-back box office flops with two of her latest films, Eden and Americana, following her American Eagle ad scandal.
The latest film starring the 27-year-old actress -- Ron Howard's $50 million-budget survival thriller Eden -- debuted in 664 theaters this weekend and earned just $1 million, according to Deadline.
The film's disappointing box office performance may be partly due to its lackluster reviews, as it currently holds a 55% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, despite it's star studded-cast.
Sydney had a dramatic make-under for her role as the real-life German settler Margret Wittmer in the movie, which also stars Ana de Armas and Jude Law.
It comes after her other film, Americana, made only $500,000 its opening weekend against a $9 million budget, the weekend prior.
The box office failures come on the heels of Sydney's 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.
In Eden, Sydney's character was four months pregnant when she moved the Galápagos archipelago's Southern most island Floreana in 1932 with her husband Heinz (Daniel Brühl) and stepson Harry (Jonathan Tittel).
Sydney has a wild birth scene in the film, where she fends off feral animals just as her water breaks, and Margret eventually welcomes a son and daughter on the remote South American isle.
The tight-knit community soon discover 'their greatest threat isn't the brutal climate or deadly wildlife, but each other' as Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn (de Armas) and Dr. Friedrich Ritter (Law) begin wielding guns.
The real Margret Wittmer was buried on Floreana Island in 2000 when she died, at age 95, after expanding the settlement and writing about her experiences in the 1959 book Floreana: A Woman's Pilgrimage to the Galápagos.
The Echo Valley actress replaced Daisy Edgar-Jones in the role back in 2023 due to her commitment to Twisters amid the SAG-AFTRA strikes.
The movie, formerly known as Origin of Species, also stars Vanessa Kirby, Felix Kammerer, Toby Wallace, and Richard Roxburgh.
Meanwhile Sydney's Americana director, Tony Tost, said he feels his movie got 'gobbled up by the zeitgeist,' amid its commercial failure.
While the movie emerged as a damp squib at the box office, Sydney's co-star Halsey urged viewers to see it in spite of the '24hr gossip tabloid denim bulls*.'
The latest film starring the actress -- Ron Howard's $50 million-budget survival thriller Eden -- debuted in 664 theaters this weekend and earned just $1 million; Seen in a still from Eden
Sydney had a dramatic make-under for her role as the real-life German settler Margret Wittmer in the movie, which also stars Ana de Armas and Jude Law
The film's disappointing box office performance may be partly due to its lackluster reviews, as it currently holds a 55% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, despite it's star studded-cast
The crime comedy received a warmer response from the critics, with the New York Times calling it a 'slick and skillful debut feature' and Variety saying Tony's 'first feature arrives more polished than most filmmakers' third or fourth.'
Now Tony, who made his directorial debut with Americana, has defended the project as 'a "hidden gem" type movie' rather than a 'blockbuster.'
'One of the great things about movies is that they outlive the zeitgeist into which they were released,' he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
'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!'
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.
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.
Earlier on Wednesday, Sydney opened up about the 'disrespectful' messages she gets on social media in an interview with The Sun.
The star said that her inbox is 'not a safe space' and that she's dealt with 'anxiety' after posting anything on social media due to trolls.
It comes after her other film, Americana, made only $500,000 its opening weekend against a $9 million budget, the weekend prior;
While the movie emerged as a damp squib at the box office, Sydney's co-star Halsey urged viewers to see it in spite of the '24hr gossip tabloid denim bulls*'; The two seen in a still
'My DMs are not a safe space. There is no respect in those,' she told the publication.
'It's a tricky one because I understand that I am playing a character, that they feel close to me where I don't know this person. So, like, they might have a relationship with me that I don't have with them,' she added.
'And so it's just something that I have to navigate, and I'm still trying to figure out.'
Sydney's controversial American Eagle ad, entitled Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans, shows its star buttoning up a set of denim trousers and offering a playful pun on the word 'genes.'
'Genes are passed down from parents to offspring often determining traits like hair color personality and even eye color...my genes are blue,' Sydney says.
The campaign was met with an explosion of controversy 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.
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.’
American Eagle insiders subsequently shared that about 70% of respondents to independent polling had a positive reaction to the promo via TMZ.
The box office failures come on the heels of Sydney's viral ad for American Eagle, which provoked a social media meltdown as frenzied critics compared it to 'Nazi propaganda'
On November 25, Sweeney wrapped her role as professional boxer Christy Martin in David Michôd's untitled biopic, which she called 'one of the most emotional, transformative experiences of my life.'
This summer, the Fifty-Fifty Films co-founder will begin producing and starring in her Euphoria castmate Colman Domingo's feature directorial debut Scandalous! about the love affair between Kim Novak and Sammy Davis Jr. (David Jonsson).
Sydney is very much in demand with several projects in the works including the Reddit-based thriller I Pretended to Be a Missing Girl for Warner Bros., Jon M. Chu's sci-fi flick Split Fiction for Amazon MGM Studios; she's producing Michael Bay's video game adaptation OutRun Universal.
Apart from her movie career Sweeney is every bit influencer lucrative paid partnerships brands like Samsung Mobile USA Dr. Squatch LANEIGE US Bai HEYDUDE.