Sony Is Allegedly Mad At Madame Web's Dakota Johnson - But Twitter Isn't Having It
At this point, we can all acknowledge that Sony's latest attempt to capitalize off the Spider-Man extended universe — the origin story "Madame Web" — was a flop on every imaginable level. As everyone knows, "Madame Web" bombed at the box office, critics panned the Marvel movie, and the best line from the "Madame Web" trailer isn't in the film. So who's to blame here? According to Sony, it's all Dakota Johnson's fault for making fun of this eminently mockable movie.
According to a report in the Daily Mail — which, should be noted, is a tabloid — sources say Sony is ticked off at Johnson for dunking on "Madame Web" at basically every available opportunity. "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 anonymous source said.
"It is okay to joke about your movie not doing well," they continued, invoking Sydney Sweeney's jokes on "Saturday Night Live" about how nobody saw the film. "But producers and Sony aren't laughing over Dakota's continued dragging of how she sees the fallout of 'Madame Web' and how she isn't taking any responsibility for its lackluster results. Not every movie is going to work, but a lot of hard work is put towards even bad movies and for your star to s*** on it is a bad look."
Fans think Sony is totally out of line if they're criticizing Dakota Johnson
Over on X (formerly known as Twitter), fans of Dakota Johnson — and people who love "Madame Web" for the campy mess it is — are turning out to support the actor amidst Sony's alleged anger. As @brockwilbur correctly pointed out, "[I]magine working at [S]ony and thinking that [D]akota [J]ohnson being tepid on a press tour is one of your Top 10 problems right now."
User @Acuna_Mattata also made an excellent point by referencing the "Morbius" situation — specifically, when Sony saw online chatter about the 2022 cinematic disaster and thought people liked it, only to re-release it in theaters and watch the Jared Leto flick bomb again. "Dakota Johnson's commentary on 'Madame Web' is the only aspect of the film I was remotely interested in," they wrote on X. "Between this and the 'Morbius' re-release, Sony is so insanely out of touch with the internet." As for @kellendria21, they bluntly said Johnson is the main draw: "I know I've made some jokes about how bad this movie was, however, I want it to be ABUNDANTLY clear to Sony that literally the *only* reason I saw it was because of Dakota Johnson and her star power."
Dakota Johnson's press tour for Madame Web was delightfully chaotic
These fans are right, and Sony needs to realize one important thing: The only reason anyone saw "Madame Web" is because Dakota Johnson is a master of weird press tours. The woman is an agent of chaos; from the beginning, she found the strangest possible ways to promote the project. First, she told Entertainment Weekly that filming the movie using a green screen was "absolutely psychotic," eventually concluding, "I was like, 'I don't know if this is going to be good at all! I hope that I did an okay job!'" On "Late Night with Seth Meyers," Johnson was asked if audiences needed to be familiar with comic book lore to watch "Madame Web," to which she responded, "You don't have to know anything about anything at all to watch this movie." Then, when MTV asked the actor to name Tom Holland's three Spider-Man movies, she went with three nonsense answers: "Spider-Man: Here He Comes," "Spider-Man: And He's Back!" and "The Goblet of Spider-Man."
It's a true joy whenever Johnson gets to embark on a press tour, and it's even better when it seems like she hates the movie she's promoting. If anyone at Sony is really angry at her, they need to change their attitude and realize that Johnson's specific brand of chaos is the only reason "Madame Web" is making any headlines at all.