‘Allowed to be sexy’: how did Anyone But You become a surprise box office hit?

Although Wonka is the undisputed king of the box office this winter, having earned £56.1m since its release in mid-December, it’s Anyone But You, a frothy romcom that recalls the genre’s 2000s heyday, that’s most surprised the film industry in recent weeks. Released last month, the Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell-starring film opened to meagre box office results in the US – $6m (£4.7m) during its first weekend – and a fairly average £1.2m in the UK.

Since then, the film has shown surprisingly strong staying power, thanks largely to positive word of mouth, as well as the lack of winter films for female audiences. In its first three weeks at the UK box office, the film has continued to gross in the ballpark of its £1.2m debut, a relatively uncommon box office phenomenon. In the US, it’s shown even stronger performance, making nearly $10m (£7.8m) in its third weekend, and outpacing its $6m debut in each subsequent weekend.

Daniel Loria, SVP of film industry technology and data firm The Boxoffice Company, says that to see such strong week-on-week performance for “a shopping mall multiplex title like this one is increasingly rare,” citing 2022’s indie sleeper hit Everything Everywhere All At Once as the most recent example. Since the advent of streaming, he says, studios have been reticent to give underperforming films a long life in cinemas. “This type of performance used to happen a lot more often, before there was a massive investment into streaming from a number of major studios,” he says. “Sony doesn’t have a streaming platform waiting for their content; it’s a studio that still plays by the playbook that was successful for 100 years pre-pandemic.”

The success of Anyone But You is a glimmer of resurgence for the humble romcom, a genre that, for the better part of a decade, has been largely relegated to streaming services. Scott Meslow, author of From Hollywood With Love: The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy, says the disappearance of romcoms from the big screen wasn’t due to a lack of audience interest, but to big studios’ increasing interest in high-budget “tentpole” films such as The Avengers and Avatar. “We were seeing a lot of $200m movies that might make a billion dollars, or a $10m movie given to an auteur that might win best picture at the Oscars,” he says. “It used to be that there were lots of movies like a $20m romcom that could make $80m and that would be treated as a big success.”

The shift to big-budget action disproportionately affected films for female audiences – who, of course, weren’t actually any less interested in films. Netflix, Meslow says, “realised that romcoms they were licensing were wildly over-performing,” and began putting their own into production. “I talked to screenwriters who had romcoms that were sitting on the shelf for a decade that no one even wanted to take a look at. Suddenly it was ‘Netflix wants to look at it Friday, and we’ll have an option for you by Monday.’”

Large studios, seeing the success of Netflix-produced films such as 2018’s Set It Up, also starring Powell, have begun reinvesting in the genre, resulting in a spate of new romcoms since the pandemic, including The Lost City, starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum, and Ticket to Paradise, starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts, both released in 2022; and last year’s No Hard Feelings, starring Jennifer Lawrence. Despite the presence of far bigger stars in these films, and far more widespread marketing campaigns, Anyone But You has already eclipsed No Hard Feelings’ US box office, and will probably lap Ticket to Paradise in the US market soon too. Loria says that the release of Anyone But You in the middle of winter, with no significant competition for screens or audiences, is a crucial factor in its success. “There was no major holiday season blockbuster like Avatar or Spider-Man to take up screens,” he says. “A word-of-mouth title like Anyone But You has that extra opportunity to get extra showtimes and screenings, and has time to find audiences over subsequent weekends.”

Hannah Strong, digital editor at Little White Lies magazine, says Anyone But You is “so representative of what audiences want – that kind of frothy, funny, easygoing film.” She attributes the success of Anyone But You, in part, to the summer 2023 release of Barbie. “I think post-Barbie, people realised they really liked going to the cinema, people that might have stopped during the pandemic, or people that don’t go very often and are now feeling more catered to,” she says. “Anyone But You does serve that female demographic, who sometimes get a bit underserved by mainstream cinema.”

Anyone But You also features nudity and sex scenes – an aspect of mainstream cinema that’s been eulogised just as much as the romcom. “It does serve an adult audience – it’s this idea of a romcom being allowed to be sexy, and not being chaste and watered down,” says Strong. “This is something that a lot of film-makers have talked about in the last few years – the idea of making films for adults is sometimes completely foreign to studios now. It feels like everyone is so nervous of doing anything that might upset someone [so] they end up coming up with these ideas that have no personality or depth.”

The film also has the benefit of bringing together Powell and Sweeney, whose stars have been on the rise since their appearances in Top Gun: Maverick and the HBO teen series Euphoria, respectively. While rumours of an on-set romance drummed up publicity for the film during its production, Strong says it’s unlikely that tabloid gossip contributed to any genuine box office impact – an idea supported by the film’s tepid first-week box office numbers in the US.

Instead, Meslow says, Anyone But You’s success can be chalked up to a good old fashioned Hollywood formula: “[If] you find stars who are hot and want to do movies like this, and you put some actual marketing muscle behind it – and you made a good movie – people are going to see it.”