Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell Sitch All for PR, Says Celeb Branding Expert

Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell‘s flirty behavior on and off set of their new rom-com is very real — real strategy, that is, cooked up for one purpose … according to a guy who’s a pro in this department.

Celebrity branding expert Jeetendr Sehdev — who’s written books on this topic — came on ‘TMZ Live’ Monday to break down what he thinks has been going on between Syd and Glen, lately. What we’ve all seen is a lot of sexy body language, and some not-so-happy significant others … creating speculation their on-screen romance is now an IRL romance.

Check out his take … essentially, Sehdev suspects this is just good old-fashioned public relations and organic viral marketing — courtesy of the stars, their teams and the studio behind their film, “Anyone But You.”

He makes compelling points. For starters, neither is a huge movie star, at this point … and having them co-lead a seemingly run-of-the-mill “hard-R” rom-com probably isn’t a recipe for the success Sony’s hoping for at the box office.

Yes, they’re both hot and on the come-up, but, according to Sehdev, the powers that be probably realized they need a little extra juice to get people interested in the flick. Think “Don’t Worry Darling” drama … but, this time, it’s about 2 costars turned-would-be-lovers.

If that is, in fact, what’s going on … Sehdev says SS and GP are going about this game all wrong. In his eyes, fans and potential viewers demand transparency these days — and he feels being more forthcoming about the sitch would go a long way.

The strange thing about this theory is the movie won’t come out for a while, as they just wrapped filming. So, any buzz for it now will almost certainly have died out when it eventually hits theaters.