Dakota Johnson Dispels Hopes for ‘Madame Web’ Sequel: ”I Probably Will Never Do Anything Like It Again”
Less than a month ago ‘Madame Web’ was released and the results have been catastrophic. The movie was an obvious box-office flop earning only $6 million on its first day. Instead of competing with the likes of ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3. ‘ or at least, recently released ‘Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom’ it’s going to be good if it manages to outperform ‘Morbius.’ There’s also the issue of critical reception, the movie is currently rated at 12% on Rotten Tomatoes by critics and 57% by the audience, making the movie “rotten.”
The story was highly criticized for being disjointed, and there’s also the issue of somewhat false advertising as the promo photos and trailers showed all three Spider-Women already having superpowers and fully costumed, but in the movie, we don’t even see their origin stories. Fans pointed out many possible reasons for a failure of such massive scope, among them being the unfamiliarity with the source material, and as the actors and the director were doing damage control, it was obvious that Dakota Johnson had given up on it. In her interview with Bustle, Johnson was frank regarding the factors that led the movie to failure and she gave one interesting statement:
It’s so hard to get movies made, and in these big movies that get made — and it’s even starting to happen with the little ones, which is what’s really freaking me out — decisions are being made by committees, and art does not do well when it’s made by committee. Films are made by a filmmaker and a team of artists around them. You cannot make art based on numbers and algorithms. My feeling has been for a long time that audiences are extremely smart, and executives have started to believe that they’re not. Audiences will always be able to sniff out bullsht. Even if films start to be made with AI, humans aren’t going to fcking want to see those.
It seems that Johnson is shifting the blame to executives, and quite frankly she is not the only actress (or director) to do that in recent times. What’s interesting is that Bob Iger blamed the failure of ‘The Marvels’ – yet another box office flop on the lack of executive presence of sets.
Johnson also somewhat confirmed that ‘Madame Web’ is for the time being her only foray into superhero waters.
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. But 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? But it was a real learning experience, and of course it’s not nice to be a part of something that’s ripped to shreds, but I can’t say that I don’t understand.
What’s interesting is that at the start of her press tour for the movie, Johnson claimed that she would be more than happy to return for a sequel, I guess time (and box office results) have given her some perspective.
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