Dakota Johnson, the star of Madame Web, reportedly made Sony execs mad following her public criticisms of the Marvel film amid its underwhelming box office performance.
As reported by Daily Mail Online, Sony reportedly believes that the 34-year-old actress is "dragging" the $80 million production, which received negative reviews from both critics and audiences following its theatrical release on Valentine's Day, without taking any responsibility for the movie's failure.
According to the insider who talked to the newspaper, "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 source also said that "not every movie is going to work, but a lot of hard work is put towwards even bad movies and for your star to s**t on it is a bad look".
The insider source went on to say that “Dakota is being looked down on over her talk of the film because everyone in the production is thinking, what if the movie was still the same but also a box office gem? 'She would be talking about sequels and probably praising herself over its good fortune.'”
Johnson's criticism of Madame Web partly includes her recent comments about how she wasn't surprised the movie bombed in theaters. However, the studio was reportedly fine with Sydney Sweeney joking about the movie during her opening monologue on Saturday Night Live.
“Unfortunately, I’m not surprised that this has gone down the way it has," Johnson told the outlet. "In these big movies that get made, decisions are being made by committees, and art does not do well when it’s made by committee[s]. 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 bullsh*t."
The Fifty Shades of Grey star portrays Cassandra Webb/Madame Web, the lead character of the superhero film that bombed at the box office.
Madame Web Bombed by Reviews
When Madame Web hit theaters last month, it received harsh criticism from critics and moviegoers, earning a 12% critics score and 57% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Some fans seemingly did not like the movie's lack of direct connections to Spider-Man in the story, which director S.J. Clarkson explained that it was made that way to stand out and "be in a universe of her own."
This is not the first Sony-produced Marvel movie that was met with negative reactions like this. Jared Leto's Morbius movie was also bombed by critics and fans, so much so that the studio decided to re-release the movie in theaters, only for it to fail at the box office yet again. The next movie in Sony's Marvel Universe is Kraven the Hunter starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, which is set to release in theaters on August 30 of this year.
Sony's Madame Web is now showing in theaters.
