Dakota Johnson has expressed her distaste for Madame Web, the latest movie in which she stars. Speaking to Bustle, Johnson shared that she’s “not surprised” at the film’s negative reception. She went on to explain the production and distribution process: “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 bullshit. Even if films start to be made with AI, humans aren’t going to fucking want to see those.”
Based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, Madame Web features Dakota Johnson in the lead role as a woman who develops psychic abilities. The film was met with an initial wave of negative reviews after its Los Angeles premiere with some labelling it “an embarrassing mess”. It comes after Johnson recently spoke out about the difficulties of filming with a high volume of CGI effects: “I’ve never really done a movie where you are on a blue screen, and there’s fake explosions going off, and someone’s going, ‘Explosion!’ and you act like there’s an explosion. That, to me, was absolutely psychotic,” she said.
Johnson added: “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.”
The Hollywood Reporter now notes that hopes of a franchise based off of Madame Web have been severely diminished. Sony had hoped to use the film to launch a series of spinoffs, featuring the characters portrayed by co-stars Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor, but those now seem highly unlikely
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