Production notes

Director Marc Lawrence suffered headaches, sinus infections, and a slipped disc while making the film, as well as having root canal treatment. Lawrence previously wrote the films Forces of Nature and Miss Congeniality, which starred Bullock, and it was on the latter film where he asked her to look at his unfinished script. Bullock liked it enough to star in and produce the film. Grant was first choice for the part, he and Bullock had already wanted to work together. Lawrence hoped the film would be different enough for Grant, not the same as his Notting Hill character, but not as unpleasant as his Bridget Jones's Diary character. Filming took place in New York City, and was noted as the first Hollywood production to take place there after the September 11 attacks.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 42% of 123 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "Though Two Weeks Notice has nothing new to add to the crowded genre, Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock make the movie a pleasant, if predictable, sit." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 42 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 out of 4 and wrote: "… some of the dialogue has a real zing to it. There were wicked little one-liners that slipped in under the radar and nudged the audience in the ribs." Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly wrote that it "Knows what it needs to do for both its stars, does it, and doesn't make a federal case about it. I'd watch these two together again in a New York minute." David Rooney of Variety called it: "An affable but undernourished romantic comedy that fails to match the freshness of the actress-producer and writer's previous collaboration, "Miss Congeniality.""

Two Weeks Notice opened at number two domestically, behind The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and spent its first five weeks in the Top 10 at the box office. It grossed $93.3 million in the United States and Canada, and $105.7 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $199 million, against a budget of $60 million.