In 2025, some movies stood out for the wrong reasons. At a time when even the biggest projects aren’t guaranteed box office success, some flop harder than others. From the mediocrity of Dwayne Johnson‘s The Smashing Machine‘s run in theaters and an underwhelming performance from Bong Joon-ho‘s Mickey 17, to the biggest franchises releasing major letdowns, including Disney’s live-action Snow White remake and the MCU’s Captain America: Brave New World 2025 cinema was a mixed bag.
But of all these failures, few flopped quite as hard as Sydney Sweeney‘s boxing biopic Christy. Released in November 2025 at a time when some were quietly predicting Sweeney for an Academy Award nomination, Christy debuted and failed to demand audience attention, despite the lead being one of the most well-known actors in the world. After a $1.2 million opening, the film quietly ran out of steam in just two weeks, concluding its U.S. theatrical run after only 14 days. In total, Christy earned $2.09 million in global revenue, against a fairly small budget of $15 million.
Looking at these numbers, you’d be forgiven for thinking this movie was terrible. On the contrary, many reviews for Christy were positively glowing, especially when commenting on Sweeney’s lead performance. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film earned a 67% score from critics and a near-perfect 94% from audiences. The consensus on the site reads, “While Christy falters in tonal cohesion and emotional impact, it remains a compelling showcase for Sydney Sweeney’s transformative performance, grounding a mythic genre in raw, personal storytelling.” In Ross Bonaime‘s review for Collider, he wrote:
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“As a platform for Sweeney to show her broad talents as an actress, Christy is undoubtedly successful, as she finds the heart and sadness within Christy Martin. But Michôd’s film doesn’t make that life story quite as riveting as it should be, which is what Martin deserves.”
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Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
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🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
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01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
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02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
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03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
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04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
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05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
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06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
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07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
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08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
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09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
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10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
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The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
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Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
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Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
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Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
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Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
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No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
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‘Christy’ Has Bounced Back
On April 10, Christy made its way to a new streaming site, becoming one of many fresh arrivals on HBO Max. Five months on from its disastrous theatrical run,Christy has found redemption in America, officially becoming the most-watched movie on HBO Max, at the time of writing. This instant success has knocked another 2025 theatrical underperformer from the top spot on HBO Max: From the World of John Wick: Ballerina.
Christy is streaming now on HBO Max. Make sure to stay tuned to Collider for all the latest streaming stories.
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Release Date
November 7, 2025
Runtime
135 minutes
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Director
David Michôd
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Writers
Mirrah Foulkes, David Michôd
Producers
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Brent Stiefel, David Michôd, Justin Lothrop, Kerry Kohansky-Roberts, Sydney Sweeney, Teddy Schwarzman
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