Last month, the Sony disaster known as “Madame Web” finally found an audience on Netflix. It’s turned into this guilty pleasure on streaming with viewers flocking to catch the botched superhero movie.
No doubt, most were curious to see if the critically reviled movie was really that bad. The latest figures claim that Sony lost $100 million on the film.
While “Madame Web” lead actress Dakota Fanning has, more or less, thrown her own film under the bus, her co-star, Emma Roberts, says she’s proud of it and believes it was served an ill fate due to “internet culture.”
In a new interview with Variety, Roberts really, truly believes “Madame Web” would have been way more successful if social media users hadn’t memed the hell out of the movie:
I personally really loved ‘Madame Web.’ I really enjoyed the movie. I thought everyone in it was great. The director, S.J. Clarkson, I think did an amazing job. She’s the reason I wanted to do that movie. If it wasn’t for internet culture and everything being made into a joke, I think that the reception would’ve been different. And that’s what bums me out about a lot of stuff, even stuff that I’ve done, is people just make such a joke out of everything now.
The film’s fate was sealed very early on when the first trailer got released and was instantly ridiculed by everyone. Almost every moment, every line of dialogue in the trailer could be mocked. Also, Johnson’s line delivery, especially her voice-over work, was laughably stale — she sounded like she had serious problems reading her lines.
It doesn’t help that during promotional touring on “Madame Web”, Johnson kept throwing shade at her own film. She actually admitted having not seen it and “probably won’t” anytime soon. “I will never do anything like it again,” Johnson stated in another interview.
This might not be the last embarrassment for Sony. They have another superhero movie set for December release, “Kraven the Hunter.” The much-delayed $130M film, starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, has also had its trailer ridiculed by the masses. It’s starting to look like déjà vu all over again for Sony.
Criterion's December lineup has some great additions to the library, but the title that jumped out at me is Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man," which officially joins the Collection on December 8.