Following the release of Madame Web, Sony is now in trouble as they received a major superhero movie bomb instead of achieving their hopes for a franchise. The movie made a measly $52 million for its opening weekend globally and to add to the disaster, it also received awful reviews.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, an industry veteran commented the following on the film: “We’re not going to see another Madame Web movie for another decade-plus…It failed. Sony tried to make a movie that was a different type of superhero movie.”
Madame Web’s flop can be attributed to a few different reasons, such as the meme-like lines in trailers that had viewers questioning the film’s writing and general audience fatigue towards superhero films as a whole. The bad reviews hit the final nail into the coffin creating a recipe for disaster as the film’s launch was doomed from the start and any potential for a series has been totally shot. Talking to THR, a theater chain insider gave a statement on ticket sales: “On Wednesday night, you could actually watch advance purchase sales declining in real time as buyers were refunding their tickets.”
Sony will now have to set their future hopes on Kraven the Hunter (coming out in August and starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Venom 3 (coming out in November and starring Tom Hardy) to bring them some financial success.
The aforementioned industry veteran also brought up the following points about Sony’s direction: “We are in transition when it comes to superhero movies. I don’t know how big that transition is or what the other side looks like. It may be fewer movies, but bigger brands. Sony is willing to take some risk but also wants home runs — that’s good. And if Kraven is a gigantic hit, the narrative could be completely different. So it’s too early to know the outcome.”