What a tangled mess
Dakota Johnson's Madame Web flop proves superheroes are no longer a sure thing
Until recently, once a superhero film entered the release calendar, it usually had its opening weekend all to itself.
Recently, though, Paramount Pictures pitted its musical biopic Bob Marley: One Love against Sony's latest Spider-Verse comic book adaptation, Madame Web.
With its ties to the Marvel Cinematic Universe — not to mention stars Dakota Johnson and Sydney Sweeney — Madame Web seemed poised to trigger a new superhero franchise.
But the film landed with a thud, as critics and theatregoers both mocked its storyline and acting. Over its six-day opening frame, the film generated an anemic $26 million at the box office.
This number trails Sony's first Marvel spinoff, 2018's Venom, which debuted with $80 million despite its bad review, and 2022's Morbius, a critical bust that still earned $170 million worldwide.
On Rotten Tomatoes, Madame Web has a grim 13 per cent average among critics and 56 per cent from audiences.
“Brutal word of mouth was a huge factor here as the initial review drop was almost unanimously rotten ... Audiences took all that negativity in and decided to skip it,” says Erick Weber, who runs Awards Ace and Midnight Movie Talk.
Meanwhile, One Love hauled in $80 million in its debut weekend.
“The matchup between Bob Marley: One Love and Madame Web brought into sharp focus the ongoing woes of the superhero genre and the ascension of music-based films,” says senior Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “The Spider-Verse has been incredibly successful but mainly with the films featuring the Spider-Man character and the animated films while the side characters have had a tougher time grabbing an audience.”
Part of Sony's expanding Marvel universe, the film follows a clairvoyant paramedic (Johnson) who protects a trio of women (played by Sweeney, Celeste O'Connor and Isabela Merced). There were clear links to other Spider-Man films and Peter Parker himself.
Jeff Bock, a box office analyst with Exhibitor Relations, also wasn't surprised that One Love dominated Madame Web. “Madame Web was a little known Spider-Man spinoff that just didn't have any hype behind it, whereas Bob Marley has been an international superstar for decades,” he says.
Madame Web joins other high-profile superhero misfires in the last year, including Shazam! 2, The Flash, The Marvels and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
“Part of this is due to a bit of superhero fatigue brought on by too many films released in too short a time frame, overly complicated storylines and in some cases a lack of a strong brand identity with the title or main character,” Dergarabedian says. “It's all made more complicated by the fact that these films always require a huge commitment of financial resources both in terms of production budget and marketing spend so their profitability threshold is very high.”
Bearing in mind the success of other musical biopics, including Rocketman and Bohemian Rhapsody, Bock says One Love's performance will stretch into March. “Inspirational stories are hot right now,” he says.
Of course the scrutiny of Johnson didn't help. Fans parsed her every comment as she did press for the film, with many speculating she didn't have the best time making Madame Web. She also admitted to one journalist that she'd only seen “four per cent of all the Marvel movies.”
But when we spoke to the actress earlier this month, Johnson emphasized its uniqueness in the Marvel Universe.
“I was really drawn to the idea of a young woman having a super power that was her mind. To me, that was enticing and something I felt I haven't seen in the superhero world before,” she said.
Nevertheless, we are unlikely to see Madame Web again. Any additional attempts to build out the Sony Spider-Verse with characters not named Spider-Man or Venom are all but dead for now.