First, they tried to blame the fans Now it appears Hollywood’s inability to take any responsibility for anything at all is being laid out after the failure of Madame Web. A report in the British newspaper The Daily Mail says that Sony Pictures is not happy with lead Dakota Johnson as she distances herself from the movie.
The $80 million-budgeted movie has taken just over $90 million worldwide to date. Critics’ reviews have not been kind. Meanwhile, the movie geek community online – the community that is the core that propels things like the MCU and the DCEU – has simply not engaged.
This has led to the usual accusations of misogyny and fan-shaming for the failings of the movie, with various people involved in the production at first trying to deflect their shortcomings onto fans. Johnson has been out doing the publicity rounds for the movie, but according to the newspaper headline:
“Dakota Johnson ANGERS Madame Web bosses for ‘dragging’ the Marvel flop and failing to ‘take any responsibility’ for its poor box office performance after saying she ‘understands’ why it bombed.”
In a killer quote from an unamed insider, the report says:
“Lots of people at Sony are questioning her star power, and how she reacted to this failure will likely come back to haunt her.”
The report says Sony sees a distinction between Sydney Sweeney’s light-hearted jokes on Saturday Night Live about the film’s performance vs. Johnson’s more direct digs that have included comments about how all decisions on the film were made by a committee and how not having seen the finished film herself is a form of self-care.
She gave an interview with Bustle magazine where she did not hold back about Madame Web, saying:
“Unfortunately, I’m not surprised that this has gone down the way it has. But it was definitely an experience for me to make that movie. I had never done anything like it before. I probably will never do anything like it again, because I don’t make sense in that world. And I know that now.
Sometimes in this industry, you sign on to something, and it’s one thing and then as you’re making it, it becomes a completely different thing, and you’re like, “Wait, what?”
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