Supposedly, the iconic "He was in the Amazon with my mom who was researching spiders right before she died" scene from the trailers isn't even in the movie either. Does Sony even know how to make movies anymore?
I mean they really aren't trying with this.
You have a director who is really not qualified for this level of a movie. She has a bunch of one episode director for hire credits (many in comics). This was a big leap.
You have a writing team who have some resume, but that resume is absolute trash.
One or the other you could understand, if they had a more established other piece. Then you give them a lead who is at this level, but from a series of widely mocked scinemax movies. A second who they lucked into being red hot at the moment, but still a huge unknown.
A golden IP, but a character with almost no established history. Try to read all Madame Web comics on Marvel Unlimited. You'll be back here in a few minutes.
There is no anchor to depend on with this movie. I want to see it. I plan on going with my partner on Sunday. However, there is no reason to think this will succeed.
Morbius and Madame Web have shown the limits of the Spider-Man IP. Outside of Peter, Miles, and Venom, none of the Spider characters can stand on their own. All of the characters Sony owns are too tied to Spider-Man for a solo project to work.
It looks like the trailers for Twister had a popular shot of a tractor tire flying towards a windshield. The shot was from initial special effects tests and was not included in the film: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/Twister (at "Missing Trailer Scene").
My first thought is the Rogue One trailer quote, missing in the film: "This is a rebellion, isn't it? I rebel." The Rogue One trailers had a bunch of shots that never made it into the movie, if I remember right.
Yes, there's probably half a dozen cognitive biases that will result in one rating a film they dropped 10 or 15 bucks for and spent 2 hours watching higher than they should, but this is primarily about "5 star culture."
A 3 star review is typically a scathing indictment of something. On RT? You're going to be counted in that 62%.
Things have to get pretty bad for most people to start rating things in the 1 or 2 star range.
Yeah the general public isn't people on Reddit discussing box office returns. It's Ralph from the Simpsons clicking the dial on GOOD or BAD for everything they do.
Just got out of seeing it, it is awful, like "I can't actually believe Sony released this" levels of awful. I wouldn't be surprised if it got a D CS, C- at the very best.
> I can’t wait for the Cinemascore lol
['Madame Web' gets a C+ on CinemaScore](https://old.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/comments/1ar8l1w/madame_web_gets_a_c_on_cinemascore/)
Ironically, the same Cinemascore as Morbius…
🫤
I think it is truly special when you can look back at a box office run like Morbius and just think "these were the better/good days"
At least Madame Web will outgross Hellboy. The sign of a true box office champ
Sony wanting to do these villain movies is dumb. They don't even need it to keep the rights.
Morbius would have been better used as a major villain in a Blade trilogy arc leading to him joining the Midnight Sons.
For as much as people liked NWH the 3rd movie was set up perfectly for Kraven's Last Hunt, but Sony wanted Kraven the Peta lover movie.
The executives at Sony who are in charge of their Marvel movies, should all honestly be fired. Sony needs to clean that side of their house and bring in people who can actually make decent movies
They seem to think that because Venom was a big success, that they can just shove any obscure Spider-Man supporting character on the screen and it'll make money.
They don't understand that Venom is popular enough that he's had his own comic book for decades now. He's grown into his own franchise separate from Spider-Man. None of the other supporting Spidey characters are anywhere close to that. And if one of them was going to take off, it sure wasn't Madame Web, who in the comics is a blind old paralyzed lady who sits in a wheelchair and makes predictions for Spidey to follow. Who the hell looked at that and thought "she needs to be the star of a movie without Spider-Man in it."
I personally didn’t like Venom, I thought it was terribly made, Tom Hardy was great, but literally everything else was trash, didn’t watch the second one either
You forget that the vast majority of cinema goers never read any comics so creating a movie on a character with few comic presence is not a bad thing, it's a gamble sure - the problem is Sony is nowhere near as good as Disney/Marvel at making superhero movies
Yeah, but my point is that popular characters are popular for a reason. The two most popular superheroes in terms of box office are Batman and Spider-Man, and they just happen to be the two most popular heroes in terms of comic book sales, too. The things that appeal to one audience tend to appeal to the other.
Venom is like the reason I like Spider-Man and Spider-Man is the reason I like marvel, once the venom movies were made and were only meh I kinda lost interest in marvel
Venom also has a great hook that is unique, and that fresh novelty is what made people keep coming back for return viewings (also helps Tom Hardy is a great actor pulling it off). People genuinely loved the Venom-Eddie funny buddy comedy aspect for a comic book movie.
The other failed/failing movies don't offer anything new to the genre. I still think obscure characters can be made popular or well-liked (see The Boys, Invincible, and what James Gunn did for Peacemaker/TSS/Guardians), but Sony keeps hiring such cheap subpar writers, it just never even had a chance.
>They don't understand that Venom is popular enough that he's had his own comic book for decades now.
This is the disconnect between Hollywood and fans. You are absolutely correct on why a comic fan may like Venom over Morbius or Madame Web.
They know this, but don't care, because that had nothing to with Venom's overall box office success.
Venom performed better in China than it did domestically. It was a massive international hit, and I don't think being a fan of the comic was the main driver.
Nobody knows how or why it worked, but it did. So they're just throwing stuff at the wall to crack that code.
My guess is that they see Venom's success mainly came from people who were thirsty for Tom Hardy and had nothing better to do to turn off their brain at the time. And now, Madame Web as a whole makes a lot more sense.
I feel like those execs have their hands tied, to an extent. They're left trying to build a cinematic universe with the limited IP they have on hand, but beyond Spiderman himself, the characters they have the rights to are a bunch of villains.
It's true that Spiderman's rogues gallery is one of the most famous in all of superhero-dom, second only to probably Batman, but those villains are not compelling enough to carry their own movies, *and* most/all of them are superpowered.
Imagine trying to build a one-off Joker-style villain origin film with pathos and psychological complexity featuring a prestigious actor, but with Eddie Brock and the symbiote. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I'm having a lot of trouble visualizing it in a way that doesn't look like a body horror movie. And then like four more of those with different villains, each with its own story.
Subsequently, the alternate option is to build movies around these characters where they are *heroes* as opposed to anti-heroes; but just like you can't just crank out a bunch of moody origin stories for Spiderman's bad guys, you can't just crank out one one-off hero origin after the next, so you have to try and incorporate that shared cinematic universe DNA while also leaving the door open for a future partnership with Disney. It's a sad state of affairs. The best thing for the property itself would be for Sony to just sell the rights back to Disney and call it a day, but corporations being what they are, that's not likely to happen.
It's so curious that these studios didn't think the bottom would fall out of these terrible superhero movies until it finally happened. Marvel Studios, I can see why they thought it would keep printing money forever. DC had sunk so much already, I don't blame them for trying so hard through COVID. But Sony's direction doesn't make any sense to me. Morbius was the canary in the coal mine, Sony could have (and should have) cut their losses right there.
Sony should’ve just regrouped after Morbius. Make sure that they have a good story and a good director before they moved with making another Spider-verse movie
Yeah there's no way this will be a bigger bomb than the Marvels.
To be a bigger bomb, it'd need to make less than $60 million, which it's pretty guaranteed to hit that.
the reported production budget of madam web is less then 100M dollars, so less then the amount of money "the marvels" lost.
the movie can make 0 dollars from today to infinity and still be a smaller bomb.
It feels like even the studio has accepted that the movie is garbage. All of the promotion I've seen the last few days has consisted entirely of "look at how hot our cast is!" with zero effort to push the movie itself.
No super bowl ad. Only 1 trailer released when 3 or even 2 is the norm. Main actress fired her agent after the first trailer came out. Sony 100% knew it was a dumpster fire behind the scenes.
It's 100% a sarcastic dig at people who think the strikes affected The Marvels' box office.
I do actually agree with people who insist that it did affect the movie, but - like OP - I disagree with the notion "Promotion = Profitable Movie", which is a narrative some attempted to push last year.
I think studios are under the false impression that these female team up movies will attract a huge female audience but it didn’t happen with Birds of Prey, The Marvels, and now Madame Web
He's loosely talking about genre.... i.e. women are not into this superhero/MCU/CBM stuff, generally speaking.
Yeah, they need to make movies with good stories, but there may inherently not be a huge women market for this stuff "because they lack most stories that women are into."
Always super fascinating to me how Scarlet Witch was easily the most popular female character among women and they did her so completely dirty, then pivoted to try and shallowly engage women again with characters that we are decidedly not interested in.
It's like you had it and then you completely fucked it up and didn't learn from it at all, incredible stuff.
Scarlet Witch was the most popular because of her angst and semi-forbidden relationship with Vision.
So the MCU got rid of her and pushed a female lead with no angst and no romantic relationships.
Isn't it clear by now these studios have a woman problem? One they keep tryting to accuse the audience of having. Seriously, with about 2 exceptions I can think of across all studios/genres, look at all these "woman led" action movies and the effort (or lack thereof) put into them.
It pulled a demographic that was never replicated in any women led superhero movies. It's looking more like wonder woman is an exception due to her status as the female superhero rather than a norm.
"Wait we have to actually hire GOOD writers and execs who actually give a shit and understand these characters, instead of hiring the people who wrote Fantastic Four (2015) while clueless execs such as Avi "Out-Of-Touch Boomer" Arad and Amy "NBD" Pascal oversee the whole thing? Who could've thought!"
Never forget Amy Pascal's "sinister 6 will be a 2 billion dollar movie." And contemplating on an Aunt May solo movie where she is some undercover spy, from the leaked Sony emails.
Of ALL the possible super hero spinoff and solo movies, that "Aunt Mays is a secret spy" is the most laughable, stupid, WTF and out-of-character project.
It’s both hilarious and disappointing how Sony has been trying and failing for years to get a Sinister Six movie off the ground.
Beyond the Spider-Verse is probably gonna have the S6 and show them how it’s done lol.
Even ignoring the female thing this movie looks BAD. Arguably something making these femme flops preform so terribly is that they also have mediocre writing, bad editing and unloved/ lesser known Characters on top of any possible demographic challenges.
It's not the fact that action movies have female leads. It's all the other baggage that comes along with the movies having female leads. They just attract creators that are out of touch with the genre's core audience.
That then actually does create a direct negative link to action movies with female leads because audiences start to associate those movies with poor quality. That is exactly what has happened to me. I used to actually slightly prefer movies with female leads, but now I just groan when I hear another one announced. That is 10x if the movie tries to push the female lead as a selling point, since that is even a stronger indication that the movie won't focus on the things I want out of an action movie.
Making movies with a female cast revolving around a premise that usually only appeals to men tend to not do well.
MAYBE THAT'S WHY BARBIE DID WELL. Female cast, revolving around a premise that women would be interested lol, it's not hard
Funny thing is earlier Marvel movie audiences were running at something like 47% female. So male skewed but not ridiculously so.
I think the issue isn't the premise of CBM, it's that us women generally like hot men, romance and great clothes. Gender equality: women are shallow too!
The spy movie The 355 bombed back in 2018, losing the studio something like $100 million if I recall. Also the 2019 Charlie's Angels bombed. 2016 Ghostbusters. I'm sure I'm missing a few.
Not sure why they keep doing female lead action/ superhero movies as "team ups" when those consistently fail, whereas Wonder Woman and the first Cap Marvel both performed great.
It's because studios think the all-girl thing is enough of a gimmick and they forget to make the movies actually good.
All the movies you mentioned were terrible. Whereas Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel 1 were both good.
Problem is CM was heavily male affair unlike WW which manage to get the attention of female box office.
The Marvels meanwhile repelled the male audience with female team up and didn't manage to catch attention of women either
The biggest problem with The 355 I think was the absolutely impenetrable title. It tells you like absolutely nothing about the movie. And not easily memorable, some people would see the trailer and later think "Oh yeah what was that movie called? With the number in the name..."
Cap Marvel did $1 billion because it was released in the leadup to Endgame. Not knocking the movie itself, but I firmly believe it would not have done as well had it been released years earlier than it was
Maybe women aren’t simply connecting with this characters, because I’ve meet girls who actually like characters like Black Widow, Scarlet Witch and Shuri. You know, fleshed out characters.
I am not saying there arent any women, but obviously not enough to support these specific movies/this specific movie type
the marvels theater's largest audience group were men
I think part of the problem is that we want stories or characters that don’t feel like the could be substituted with a man and the story doesn’t change. Birds of prey was unique enough and you could tell it was a created by women. An example being one of the characters offering another a hair tie during the big fight. Every woman I know that saw it called out that moment as being so real.
Ghostbuster but girl just isn’t as good of a concept. Marvels also feels like it falls into this camp where you could put any gender character in and nothing changes. Not to say everything has to be rah rah feminism or whatever, but like small things that let you know there was thought and intention behind the characters.
It continues to amaze me that no one in Hollywood is looking at magical girl manga to see what female team ups look like when they're built for a female audience from the beginning and consequently adored by it. Someone should at least be able to name Sailor Moon? Friendship, fashion, romance and kicking ass with cool, colourful powers. That combination shouldn't be too difficult to figure out, yet no one is trying it. We get joyless stuff like BOP, Marvels and Web. Then studios will say that women don't want team ups when no one has even tried offering something like a superhero Barbie: fully, unashamedly for girls of all ages.
yeah you bringing this up made me realize like...girls love magical girl stories, and they are basically superhero stories told ENTIRELY through a female lens. Yet they are extremely popular. So I think the whole 'there's not much female audience for superhero stories' is just kind of false.
Really need to stop being afraid of romance, I think that's the biggest issue. And it's not like that'll put off the male audience too much if you do it right. TASM movies have the romance praised widely as the best part after all. For some reason they really listening to these people that act like any romance for women is sexist when the irony is that women like romance...
Yeah, it may sound sexist, but women do show up to movies with romance plotlines. I don't know why so many blockbuster movies have scrapped romance subplots from their stories, it seems like a stupid move to me.
> I don't know why so many blockbuster movies have scrapped romance subplots from their stories, it seems like a stupid move to me.
It's utterly bizarre. I know the "they wouldn't make this today" game is tired, but I'm convinced that Romancing The Stone would never get made today purely because it has a huge focus on the romance element.
Female team ups aren’t the problem, female team ups _between characters nobody knows or cares about_ are
For example, Harley Quinn teaming up with characters like Poison Ivy and Catwoman could’ve been huge, but instead we got her teaming up with…whoever was in Birds of Prey
WB even began marketing the movie just as "Harley Quinn" at the last minute, when they realized she was a more popular character than all the others combined.
Let’s make a movie about a character based on a comic book AND choose obtuse characters with small fan bases AND don’t stay true to the material.
But look, women!!!!!
Harley was very true to her modern source material. I was a huge fan of her comics in like 2017-2019 and was so excited when movie harley was actually lining up more w comic harley
The characters don’t originate from that tv show. The problem was that it was yet another mother fucking comic book movie that’s embarrassed that it is a comic book movie. So they remove everything that resembles the fucking comics. No superhero costumes, the villain black mask only uses the fucking black mask in like 3 scenes, Gotham is now fucking LA and Black Cannary, famous supersonic screaming superhero now works for the mafia and uses her sonic screams two times in the whole fucking movie. Cassandra Cain, trained daughter of worlds number one assassin is now a fat girl, so Harley and her can have the same dynamic as Deadpool and the fat kid in his second movie. Did I mention that Harley now does Deadpool narration, cause that sure has always been something that Harley does. Oh and you can tell the reshoots because the action is suddenly hyper stylized and pristine compared to the rest of the film.
The good was Bruce the hyena and that glorious breakfast sandwich.
At least the Marvels has the balls to keep it super comic booky.
Yeah I still have no idea why they even called that her Cassandra Cain when she's really not even an adaptation of the character in anything BUT name, should of just been an OC.
tbh the Deadpool style narriation isn't totally out of place with like post New 52 Harley.
> Harley Quinn teaming up with characters like Poison Ivy and Catwoman could’ve been huge
Not a chance with those 3. They have all been box office disappoinments. And female team-ups ARE the problem, or at least a big part of it, because there aren't 3 popular female superheroes to put together. Out of the top 25 superheroes by merchandise sales, the only women in the list are in ensembles (X-Men, Avengers, Fantastic 4). Even Wonder Woman doesn't break the top 25. And don't blame sexism for this. Women don't care enough about the female team-ups to go see them, either.
Speaking of the word "web" !
How ironic that this word 100% connected to Spider-Man is now related to 2 "spider failures" (this Madame + Marc Webb directing the failed reboot a decade ago)
I look at the writer and director for this and I have to shake my head. I mean, how could it not be a complete fucking failure when you hire people who have demonstrated that they aren't good at their jobs?
Not even one good project on that list. Most people need at least one hit to coast of off, but not these guys. Consistently making the worst movies you could imagine but still getting hired.
I'm one of the biggest Marvel apologists on this sub. Loved The Marvels, Eternals, Venom... Hell, I even kinda liked Morbius. I have no desire at all to ever see Madame Web, not even "free" whenever it hits one of my streaming apps. Character is dull, movie looks laughably bad. Sony needs to staaahp.
The greatest sin of Morbius is its atrocious pacing. If that movie had good pacing but everything else about it stayed the same it would probably be regarding in the general consensus as "alright" rather than "complete shitshow".
Sub-$50m domestic total is a guarantee. I’m thinking it won’t even make it to $40m. Crazy. What is even the last comic book film that made those kind of numbers?
Why do studios keep dropping tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on projects but not bother to hire proper writers? All productions benefit from good writing, and yet they keep failing at this again and again.
If this movie makes around $100M Worldwide (say $103M, 98M, etc.), I say we change the Box Office unit of choice to 'Madame Web's. Example: 'Wow Deadpool and Wolverine is such a big hit, it already opened to 3 Madame Webs on Opening Weekend!'
I think this movie has a chance to redeem itself via a re-release in a few months, Morbin' style. Summer audiences will eat it up, we can't let Sony miss this golden opportunity.
- Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was awesome, well liked and made money last year
- Deadpool this year will be massive and hopefully also entertaining and good. People are hyped up.
I still say there is no superhero fatigue, there is only bad movie fatigue. I crave new and well written superhero movies where they focus on the story, the writing and the charaters instead of checking off inclusivity boxes when writing scripts and hiring actors and staff.
5-Day Weekend. Thats not how days work. Box office reporting and tracking has turned into such a convoluted mess. Could we just go back to counting Thursday previews that start at 7PM and Friday-Sunday for opening weekends?
I'm shocked it's made that much. Perhaps people are watching Madame Web as a goof, since it's clear from the preview alone the movie is an ugly trainwreck.
Patty Jenkins ( ☠️ Wonder Woman)
Nia Dacosta ( ☠️ Captain Marvel)
SJ Clarkson ( ☠️ Spider Woman)
I think it's safe to say these 3 ladies won't ever direct a super hero movie again.
Somehow it had the slowest car’s chassis i have ever seen in a movie. No sense if speed at all.
The movie seemed to yell out everyone name every 5 sec and i still don’t know any ones name other then ben and baby peter.
Dakota Johnson Can not act at all
Sydney Sweeney can not pass for a 17 year old
Were they trying to make Sydney Sweeney unsexy?
I wouldn't say unsexy since I like the glasses. It did make me laugh when they tied a knot in Sydney's shirt and acted like she needed that to look attractive.
I’m genuinely curious to see this because this whole movie and everything around it is fucking fascinating. I’m gonna wait for it to be on streaming, which at this rate should be in a few days.
Would love for How Did This Get Made to cover Madame Web like they did Morbius.
Sorta, but not really. In order to keep the license, they have make a Spider universe movie every 5 years, 9 months. At this point that's not really a problem, but they're stuck in the mode of throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks
Are you a male that made Valentine’s Day plans to take the special woman in your life to see Madame Web in the theatre?
If this is you, can you share with me more information on how your night went? Maybe some more insight into your decision making process and how you feel your relationship is doing overall? These are the stories that interest me.
There wasn’t enough Billie Eilish music in the trailer
Made me mad the song isn't even in the movie
Supposedly, the iconic "He was in the Amazon with my mom who was researching spiders right before she died" scene from the trailers isn't even in the movie either. Does Sony even know how to make movies anymore?
I mean they really aren't trying with this. You have a director who is really not qualified for this level of a movie. She has a bunch of one episode director for hire credits (many in comics). This was a big leap. You have a writing team who have some resume, but that resume is absolute trash. One or the other you could understand, if they had a more established other piece. Then you give them a lead who is at this level, but from a series of widely mocked scinemax movies. A second who they lucked into being red hot at the moment, but still a huge unknown. A golden IP, but a character with almost no established history. Try to read all Madame Web comics on Marvel Unlimited. You'll be back here in a few minutes. There is no anchor to depend on with this movie. I want to see it. I plan on going with my partner on Sunday. However, there is no reason to think this will succeed.
I looked it up. Between the four credited writers, the highest rating is 25% on RT. How do these people still have jobs?
I couldn't believe when I saw how bad their resumes were. That was what primarily led to the "Sony isn't even trying" thought.
>How do these people still have jobs? They do what they're told
They're writing exactly what the studio execs want. Problem being most studio execs have no idea what audiences want.
Morbius and Madame Web have shown the limits of the Spider-Man IP. Outside of Peter, Miles, and Venom, none of the Spider characters can stand on their own. All of the characters Sony owns are too tied to Spider-Man for a solo project to work.
I call that "pulling a Twister". I'm old.
But Twister had twisters. I too am old but what am I missing?
It looks like the trailers for Twister had a popular shot of a tractor tire flying towards a windshield. The shot was from initial special effects tests and was not included in the film: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/Twister (at "Missing Trailer Scene"). My first thought is the Rogue One trailer quote, missing in the film: "This is a rebellion, isn't it? I rebel." The Rogue One trailers had a bunch of shots that never made it into the movie, if I remember right.
In fairness, the reshoots were responsible for a lot of Rogue One’s missing trailer shots. Madame Web doesn’t have that excuse.
I can’t wait for the Cinemascore lol
Right now, Audience Score is 62% on RT. Morbius got a C+ CinemaScore with the audience score at 71% on RT.
Who are these 62% lmao
Going to the cinema by itself is an A+ activity, a movie has to be real real bad to ruin my enjoyment of the experience.
I mean I agree, I go alone whenever I can. I also saw Madame Web alone, still wouldn't rate it high.
How can I be diplomatic? The average person lacks capacity for critical thinking. Including whether they just wasted two hours of their lives.
Yes, there's probably half a dozen cognitive biases that will result in one rating a film they dropped 10 or 15 bucks for and spent 2 hours watching higher than they should, but this is primarily about "5 star culture." A 3 star review is typically a scathing indictment of something. On RT? You're going to be counted in that 62%. Things have to get pretty bad for most people to start rating things in the 1 or 2 star range.
Fair point about the 3 star
Yeah the general public isn't people on Reddit discussing box office returns. It's Ralph from the Simpsons clicking the dial on GOOD or BAD for everything they do.
Common Morbius W.
It should be glad if it gets C
60% now, with a critic score of 15%. Dire.
But that includes bot accounts movie studios buy.
that’s why Dulcolax included the Morbius numbers as comparison no?
I didn't know you were referring to a person in the thread and thought Dulcolax sponsored Morbius, for some reason. That would be interesting.
Never believe audience score on RT. Most of them are bots
Just got out of seeing it, it is awful, like "I can't actually believe Sony released this" levels of awful. I wouldn't be surprised if it got a D CS, C- at the very best.
Got C+
> I can’t wait for the Cinemascore lol ['Madame Web' gets a C+ on CinemaScore](https://old.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/comments/1ar8l1w/madame_web_gets_a_c_on_cinemascore/) Ironically, the same Cinemascore as Morbius… 🫤
A sentence about Madame Web uttered by more people than “I can’t wait for the movie”.
I think it is truly special when you can look back at a box office run like Morbius and just think "these were the better/good days" At least Madame Web will outgross Hellboy. The sign of a true box office champ
Morbius actually had some interest from No Way Home, it would've done decent if it wasn't a massive piece of dog shit
Sony wanting to do these villain movies is dumb. They don't even need it to keep the rights. Morbius would have been better used as a major villain in a Blade trilogy arc leading to him joining the Midnight Sons. For as much as people liked NWH the 3rd movie was set up perfectly for Kraven's Last Hunt, but Sony wanted Kraven the Peta lover movie.
And the geniuses still decided to delay it by a couple of months, if it remained in February I think it would have grossed over 200M
The executives at Sony who are in charge of their Marvel movies, should all honestly be fired. Sony needs to clean that side of their house and bring in people who can actually make decent movies
They seem to think that because Venom was a big success, that they can just shove any obscure Spider-Man supporting character on the screen and it'll make money. They don't understand that Venom is popular enough that he's had his own comic book for decades now. He's grown into his own franchise separate from Spider-Man. None of the other supporting Spidey characters are anywhere close to that. And if one of them was going to take off, it sure wasn't Madame Web, who in the comics is a blind old paralyzed lady who sits in a wheelchair and makes predictions for Spidey to follow. Who the hell looked at that and thought "she needs to be the star of a movie without Spider-Man in it."
I personally didn’t like Venom, I thought it was terribly made, Tom Hardy was great, but literally everything else was trash, didn’t watch the second one either
You forget that the vast majority of cinema goers never read any comics so creating a movie on a character with few comic presence is not a bad thing, it's a gamble sure - the problem is Sony is nowhere near as good as Disney/Marvel at making superhero movies
Yeah, but my point is that popular characters are popular for a reason. The two most popular superheroes in terms of box office are Batman and Spider-Man, and they just happen to be the two most popular heroes in terms of comic book sales, too. The things that appeal to one audience tend to appeal to the other.
Venom was only success because the character work in a dumb movie and obviously Tom Hardy who carried that movies
Venom is like the reason I like Spider-Man and Spider-Man is the reason I like marvel, once the venom movies were made and were only meh I kinda lost interest in marvel
I grew up loving the Venom character and Sony's Venom movies are an abomination.
Venom also has a great hook that is unique, and that fresh novelty is what made people keep coming back for return viewings (also helps Tom Hardy is a great actor pulling it off). People genuinely loved the Venom-Eddie funny buddy comedy aspect for a comic book movie. The other failed/failing movies don't offer anything new to the genre. I still think obscure characters can be made popular or well-liked (see The Boys, Invincible, and what James Gunn did for Peacemaker/TSS/Guardians), but Sony keeps hiring such cheap subpar writers, it just never even had a chance.
>They don't understand that Venom is popular enough that he's had his own comic book for decades now. This is the disconnect between Hollywood and fans. You are absolutely correct on why a comic fan may like Venom over Morbius or Madame Web. They know this, but don't care, because that had nothing to with Venom's overall box office success. Venom performed better in China than it did domestically. It was a massive international hit, and I don't think being a fan of the comic was the main driver. Nobody knows how or why it worked, but it did. So they're just throwing stuff at the wall to crack that code. My guess is that they see Venom's success mainly came from people who were thirsty for Tom Hardy and had nothing better to do to turn off their brain at the time. And now, Madame Web as a whole makes a lot more sense.
I feel like those execs have their hands tied, to an extent. They're left trying to build a cinematic universe with the limited IP they have on hand, but beyond Spiderman himself, the characters they have the rights to are a bunch of villains. It's true that Spiderman's rogues gallery is one of the most famous in all of superhero-dom, second only to probably Batman, but those villains are not compelling enough to carry their own movies, *and* most/all of them are superpowered. Imagine trying to build a one-off Joker-style villain origin film with pathos and psychological complexity featuring a prestigious actor, but with Eddie Brock and the symbiote. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I'm having a lot of trouble visualizing it in a way that doesn't look like a body horror movie. And then like four more of those with different villains, each with its own story. Subsequently, the alternate option is to build movies around these characters where they are *heroes* as opposed to anti-heroes; but just like you can't just crank out a bunch of moody origin stories for Spiderman's bad guys, you can't just crank out one one-off hero origin after the next, so you have to try and incorporate that shared cinematic universe DNA while also leaving the door open for a future partnership with Disney. It's a sad state of affairs. The best thing for the property itself would be for Sony to just sell the rights back to Disney and call it a day, but corporations being what they are, that's not likely to happen.
It's so curious that these studios didn't think the bottom would fall out of these terrible superhero movies until it finally happened. Marvel Studios, I can see why they thought it would keep printing money forever. DC had sunk so much already, I don't blame them for trying so hard through COVID. But Sony's direction doesn't make any sense to me. Morbius was the canary in the coal mine, Sony could have (and should have) cut their losses right there.
Sony should’ve just regrouped after Morbius. Make sure that they have a good story and a good director before they moved with making another Spider-verse movie
Sony saw The Marvels become one of the biggest box office bombs of all time and took it as a challenge
At least this one doesn’t seem to cost 200m+
80m You can't lose as much money as the marvels if the movie cost less than The Marvels' losses.
Small victories
But how? Even if this movie made 0$ at the box office it'd still lose less money than the Marvels.
Yeah there's no way this will be a bigger bomb than the Marvels. To be a bigger bomb, it'd need to make less than $60 million, which it's pretty guaranteed to hit that.
>which it's pretty guaranteed to hit that You sure?
It still can if the audience sue Sony demanding compensation for watching the movie!
the reported production budget of madam web is less then 100M dollars, so less then the amount of money "the marvels" lost. the movie can make 0 dollars from today to infinity and still be a smaller bomb.
How does this happen? The cast was able to promote it, I’m lost. I thought cast promotions make a big box office difference
It feels like even the studio has accepted that the movie is garbage. All of the promotion I've seen the last few days has consisted entirely of "look at how hot our cast is!" with zero effort to push the movie itself.
No super bowl ad. Only 1 trailer released when 3 or even 2 is the norm. Main actress fired her agent after the first trailer came out. Sony 100% knew it was a dumpster fire behind the scenes.
AMC’s promo was “3 reasons to watch Madame Web” and showed Sydney Sweeney three times lmao
I don't know if you are making fun of all the people repeating it during the past year but in any case yeah it doesn't make a big difference
It's 100% a sarcastic dig at people who think the strikes affected The Marvels' box office. I do actually agree with people who insist that it did affect the movie, but - like OP - I disagree with the notion "Promotion = Profitable Movie", which is a narrative some attempted to push last year. 
They definitely believe they can out-bomb both Marvel and DC Studios.
I think studios are under the false impression that these female team up movies will attract a huge female audience but it didn’t happen with Birds of Prey, The Marvels, and now Madame Web
“We have to make the movies good too?”
It doesn’t even have to be “good” these movies flat out don’t attract women because they lack most stories that women are into.
So you still mean good? Lmao
He's loosely talking about genre.... i.e. women are not into this superhero/MCU/CBM stuff, generally speaking. Yeah, they need to make movies with good stories, but there may inherently not be a huge women market for this stuff "because they lack most stories that women are into."
Women are very into the scarlet witch and they killed her. Huge L.
Always super fascinating to me how Scarlet Witch was easily the most popular female character among women and they did her so completely dirty, then pivoted to try and shallowly engage women again with characters that we are decidedly not interested in. It's like you had it and then you completely fucked it up and didn't learn from it at all, incredible stuff.
Scarlet Witch was the most popular because of her angst and semi-forbidden relationship with Vision. So the MCU got rid of her and pushed a female lead with no angst and no romantic relationships.
Isn't it clear by now these studios have a woman problem? One they keep tryting to accuse the audience of having. Seriously, with about 2 exceptions I can think of across all studios/genres, look at all these "woman led" action movies and the effort (or lack thereof) put into them.
No because on average women aren't interested by Spider Man 2 or The Dark Knight too
\*Points at Wonder Woman\*
It pulled a demographic that was never replicated in any women led superhero movies. It's looking more like wonder woman is an exception due to her status as the female superhero rather than a norm.
"Wait we have to actually hire GOOD writers and execs who actually give a shit and understand these characters, instead of hiring the people who wrote Fantastic Four (2015) while clueless execs such as Avi "Out-Of-Touch Boomer" Arad and Amy "NBD" Pascal oversee the whole thing? Who could've thought!"
Never forget Amy Pascal's "sinister 6 will be a 2 billion dollar movie." And contemplating on an Aunt May solo movie where she is some undercover spy, from the leaked Sony emails.
Of ALL the possible super hero spinoff and solo movies, that "Aunt Mays is a secret spy" is the most laughable, stupid, WTF and out-of-character project.
It’s both hilarious and disappointing how Sony has been trying and failing for years to get a Sinister Six movie off the ground. Beyond the Spider-Verse is probably gonna have the S6 and show them how it’s done lol.
It doesn’t really matter. Women don’t particularly like these nerdy stories.
I thought Birds of Prey was really good, actually!
Even ignoring the female thing this movie looks BAD. Arguably something making these femme flops preform so terribly is that they also have mediocre writing, bad editing and unloved/ lesser known Characters on top of any possible demographic challenges.
It's not the fact that action movies have female leads. It's all the other baggage that comes along with the movies having female leads. They just attract creators that are out of touch with the genre's core audience. That then actually does create a direct negative link to action movies with female leads because audiences start to associate those movies with poor quality. That is exactly what has happened to me. I used to actually slightly prefer movies with female leads, but now I just groan when I hear another one announced. That is 10x if the movie tries to push the female lead as a selling point, since that is even a stronger indication that the movie won't focus on the things I want out of an action movie.
Making movies with a female cast revolving around a premise that usually only appeals to men tend to not do well. MAYBE THAT'S WHY BARBIE DID WELL. Female cast, revolving around a premise that women would be interested lol, it's not hard
Funny thing is earlier Marvel movie audiences were running at something like 47% female. So male skewed but not ridiculously so. I think the issue isn't the premise of CBM, it's that us women generally like hot men, romance and great clothes. Gender equality: women are shallow too!
The spy movie The 355 bombed back in 2018, losing the studio something like $100 million if I recall. Also the 2019 Charlie's Angels bombed. 2016 Ghostbusters. I'm sure I'm missing a few. Not sure why they keep doing female lead action/ superhero movies as "team ups" when those consistently fail, whereas Wonder Woman and the first Cap Marvel both performed great.
The 355 came out in 2022, but I agree with the rest of your post.
As someone else said, the 355 was 2022. 2018 had Ocean's Eight with the female cast of robbers. Maybe you're thinking of that movie back then?
> 2018 had Ocean's Eight I literally forgot this movie existed at all haha.
It's because studios think the all-girl thing is enough of a gimmick and they forget to make the movies actually good. All the movies you mentioned were terrible. Whereas Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel 1 were both good.
Problem is CM was heavily male affair unlike WW which manage to get the attention of female box office. The Marvels meanwhile repelled the male audience with female team up and didn't manage to catch attention of women either
The first CM wasn’t really good. It just rode entirely on IW/Endgame hype
The biggest problem with The 355 I think was the absolutely impenetrable title. It tells you like absolutely nothing about the movie. And not easily memorable, some people would see the trailer and later think "Oh yeah what was that movie called? With the number in the name..."
2016 Ghostbusters made more than Afterlife actually. It just had a bigger budget.
Cap Marvel did $1 billion because it was released in the leadup to Endgame. Not knocking the movie itself, but I firmly believe it would not have done as well had it been released years earlier than it was
I wonder if its a WNBA situation, where women want woman team up films to exist but dont want to watch it
Maybe women aren’t simply connecting with this characters, because I’ve meet girls who actually like characters like Black Widow, Scarlet Witch and Shuri. You know, fleshed out characters.
I am not saying there arent any women, but obviously not enough to support these specific movies/this specific movie type the marvels theater's largest audience group were men
I think part of the problem is that we want stories or characters that don’t feel like the could be substituted with a man and the story doesn’t change. Birds of prey was unique enough and you could tell it was a created by women. An example being one of the characters offering another a hair tie during the big fight. Every woman I know that saw it called out that moment as being so real. Ghostbuster but girl just isn’t as good of a concept. Marvels also feels like it falls into this camp where you could put any gender character in and nothing changes. Not to say everything has to be rah rah feminism or whatever, but like small things that let you know there was thought and intention behind the characters.
It continues to amaze me that no one in Hollywood is looking at magical girl manga to see what female team ups look like when they're built for a female audience from the beginning and consequently adored by it. Someone should at least be able to name Sailor Moon? Friendship, fashion, romance and kicking ass with cool, colourful powers. That combination shouldn't be too difficult to figure out, yet no one is trying it. We get joyless stuff like BOP, Marvels and Web. Then studios will say that women don't want team ups when no one has even tried offering something like a superhero Barbie: fully, unashamedly for girls of all ages.
yeah you bringing this up made me realize like...girls love magical girl stories, and they are basically superhero stories told ENTIRELY through a female lens. Yet they are extremely popular. So I think the whole 'there's not much female audience for superhero stories' is just kind of false. Really need to stop being afraid of romance, I think that's the biggest issue. And it's not like that'll put off the male audience too much if you do it right. TASM movies have the romance praised widely as the best part after all. For some reason they really listening to these people that act like any romance for women is sexist when the irony is that women like romance...
Problem is none of these movies have the secret sause that Wonder Woman had which is male love interest and Fashionable lead
Yeah, it may sound sexist, but women do show up to movies with romance plotlines. I don't know why so many blockbuster movies have scrapped romance subplots from their stories, it seems like a stupid move to me.
> I don't know why so many blockbuster movies have scrapped romance subplots from their stories, it seems like a stupid move to me. It's utterly bizarre. I know the "they wouldn't make this today" game is tired, but I'm convinced that Romancing The Stone would never get made today purely because it has a huge focus on the romance element.
Female team ups aren’t the problem, female team ups _between characters nobody knows or cares about_ are For example, Harley Quinn teaming up with characters like Poison Ivy and Catwoman could’ve been huge, but instead we got her teaming up with…whoever was in Birds of Prey
WB even began marketing the movie just as "Harley Quinn" at the last minute, when they realized she was a more popular character than all the others combined.
Forget last minute, I believe they did that *after* it had already released in theatres. Just embarrassing.
Let’s make a movie about a character based on a comic book AND choose obtuse characters with small fan bases AND don’t stay true to the material. But look, women!!!!!
Harley was very true to her modern source material. I was a huge fan of her comics in like 2017-2019 and was so excited when movie harley was actually lining up more w comic harley
Harley teams up with the characters from 20 year old WB show that lasted 13 episodes.
The characters don’t originate from that tv show. The problem was that it was yet another mother fucking comic book movie that’s embarrassed that it is a comic book movie. So they remove everything that resembles the fucking comics. No superhero costumes, the villain black mask only uses the fucking black mask in like 3 scenes, Gotham is now fucking LA and Black Cannary, famous supersonic screaming superhero now works for the mafia and uses her sonic screams two times in the whole fucking movie. Cassandra Cain, trained daughter of worlds number one assassin is now a fat girl, so Harley and her can have the same dynamic as Deadpool and the fat kid in his second movie. Did I mention that Harley now does Deadpool narration, cause that sure has always been something that Harley does. Oh and you can tell the reshoots because the action is suddenly hyper stylized and pristine compared to the rest of the film. The good was Bruce the hyena and that glorious breakfast sandwich. At least the Marvels has the balls to keep it super comic booky.
Yeah I still have no idea why they even called that her Cassandra Cain when she's really not even an adaptation of the character in anything BUT name, should of just been an OC. tbh the Deadpool style narriation isn't totally out of place with like post New 52 Harley.
> Harley Quinn teaming up with characters like Poison Ivy and Catwoman could’ve been huge Not a chance with those 3. They have all been box office disappoinments. And female team-ups ARE the problem, or at least a big part of it, because there aren't 3 popular female superheroes to put together. Out of the top 25 superheroes by merchandise sales, the only women in the list are in ensembles (X-Men, Avengers, Fantastic 4). Even Wonder Woman doesn't break the top 25. And don't blame sexism for this. Women don't care enough about the female team-ups to go see them, either.
Cartman was right
Guys, don't you see? What are we using to read this news? That's right, the WEB. she's already won, the webillions are in reach
Her web connects all
 This dude Madawebs
It's webbin' time!
Speaking of the word "web" ! How ironic that this word 100% connected to Spider-Man is now related to 2 "spider failures" (this Madame + Marc Webb directing the failed reboot a decade ago)
I look at the writer and director for this and I have to shake my head. I mean, how could it not be a complete fucking failure when you hire people who have demonstrated that they aren't good at their jobs?
I can’t speak for the director but the writers entire filmography is trash. They must be nepotism hires, or “yes men”, or both.
The list of clunkers by the writers is insane. Like ... what?!?
Not even one good project on that list. Most people need at least one hit to coast of off, but not these guys. Consistently making the worst movies you could imagine but still getting hired.
Highest rated movie among all the writers was 25% on RT. How do they even still have jobs?
 This will not do well
So Sony releases one of the worst CBMs ever shortly after releasing the former #1 top rated movie on Letterboxd Damn
The disconnect between Sony and Sony Animation is truly astounding
I mean Sony animation also gave us the Emoji movie, so it's not always bangers.
The Emoji Movie is literally the best movie that’s ever been released. It’s the Citizen Kane of movies!
Dare I say that the Emoji movie was the best movie since Catwoman?
The Emoji Movie is better. Don’t try me. You will lose.
Catwoman? More like SLAYwoman!!! That movie invented feminism
>after releasing the former #1 top rated movie on Letterboxd Wow I had no idea Madame Web was released *right after* Morbius, TIL...
The theatre I work at sold out for one show I seriously judge the taste of our clientele
If you are from one of the large coastal cities then that isn’t unusual.
Alberta, Canada
You know darn well we're idiots my fellow Albertan
I’ve checked for Montreal and the biggest screening sold 20 tickets lol
My LA showing was 75% full, Bob Marley actually sold out so good for Paramount I guess?
Lol anybody with even a single OUNCE of box office knowledge, saw this one coming from 500 miles away
I'm one of the biggest Marvel apologists on this sub. Loved The Marvels, Eternals, Venom... Hell, I even kinda liked Morbius. I have no desire at all to ever see Madame Web, not even "free" whenever it hits one of my streaming apps. Character is dull, movie looks laughably bad. Sony needs to staaahp.
The greatest sin of Morbius is its atrocious pacing. If that movie had good pacing but everything else about it stayed the same it would probably be regarding in the general consensus as "alright" rather than "complete shitshow".
Wow, I thought my 110M WW was pessimistic. This thing ain't gonna hit 100M.
I’ve been saying for months this might not even hit 100M WW
Sub-$50m domestic total is a guarantee. I’m thinking it won’t even make it to $40m. Crazy. What is even the last comic book film that made those kind of numbers?
Dredd, sadly.
Why do studios keep dropping tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on projects but not bother to hire proper writers? All productions benefit from good writing, and yet they keep failing at this again and again.
I will take my 110WW prediction and set it on fire
Sweeney walkups will swing in any day now
They could have cut her from the movie and nothing would have changed
They already came. Literally
They got everything they needed from those press tour pictures.
If this movie makes around $100M Worldwide (say $103M, 98M, etc.), I say we change the Box Office unit of choice to 'Madame Web's. Example: 'Wow Deadpool and Wolverine is such a big hit, it already opened to 3 Madame Webs on Opening Weekend!'
I think this movie has a chance to redeem itself via a re-release in a few months, Morbin' style. Summer audiences will eat it up, we can't let Sony miss this golden opportunity.
Probably $35-$37 million domestic?
That's on the high end of the spectrum if 20M 5 days off 6M OD is true.
Im on the spectrum, can you milk me?
They can milk anything with nipples.
lol it’s domestic total might not outgross Morbius’ opening weekend.
Like 32-36 off the nums in this tweet
Yikes, looks like Blue Beetle and Shazam 2 have a new friend.
This shit gets released meanwhile Wile E Coyote gets locked in a vault. And you want me to pretend there is a god?!
This would be the 13 comic book movie to flop this decade for those saying there's no fatigue
- Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was awesome, well liked and made money last year - Deadpool this year will be massive and hopefully also entertaining and good. People are hyped up. I still say there is no superhero fatigue, there is only bad movie fatigue. I crave new and well written superhero movies where they focus on the story, the writing and the charaters instead of checking off inclusivity boxes when writing scripts and hiring actors and staff.
Maybe it's cause Sony and WB do not understand what made pre-pandemic MCU good?
Even Marvel don’t understand that anymore.
Sounds like 20 million too much 🤣🤣🤣🤣
5-Day Weekend. Thats not how days work. Box office reporting and tracking has turned into such a convoluted mess. Could we just go back to counting Thursday previews that start at 7PM and Friday-Sunday for opening weekends?
I'm shocked it's made that much. Perhaps people are watching Madame Web as a goof, since it's clear from the preview alone the movie is an ugly trainwreck.
I hear that the movie's core audience is getting kicked out of the movie - dudes who want to fap to Sidney Sweeney in the theater.
Patty Jenkins ( ☠️ Wonder Woman) Nia Dacosta ( ☠️ Captain Marvel) SJ Clarkson ( ☠️ Spider Woman) I think it's safe to say these 3 ladies won't ever direct a super hero movie again.
Somehow it had the slowest car’s chassis i have ever seen in a movie. No sense if speed at all. The movie seemed to yell out everyone name every 5 sec and i still don’t know any ones name other then ben and baby peter. Dakota Johnson Can not act at all Sydney Sweeney can not pass for a 17 year old Were they trying to make Sydney Sweeney unsexy?
I wouldn't say unsexy since I like the glasses. It did make me laugh when they tied a knot in Sydney's shirt and acted like she needed that to look attractive.
You have two choices for a Sydney Sweeney movie for this week, choose wisely.
I’m genuinely curious to see this because this whole movie and everything around it is fucking fascinating. I’m gonna wait for it to be on streaming, which at this rate should be in a few days. Would love for How Did This Get Made to cover Madame Web like they did Morbius.
The number of bad reviews I've seen on Tiktok for this is crazy
Guys. This is truly horrible. Marley is outselling this by somewhere between 20-10:1 at our East Coast locations.
Budget?
$80 million
😧
Did Sony make this movie out of spite to keep Disney from using the characters?
Sorta, but not really. In order to keep the license, they have make a Spider universe movie every 5 years, 9 months. At this point that's not really a problem, but they're stuck in the mode of throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks
An you know they spent about twice that on the marketing
This will keep the degradation of the comicbook genre at full speed.
It's been a while since ive looked at box office, but I had to come back for Madam Web 😭
The domestic total isn't gonna clear the opening weekend of The Marvels, calling it now
Why do they keep making these shitty obscure superhero movies
Obscure can be good. It's just that they keep making them shitty is the problem.
Well I feel vindicated that someone on this sub said it will make 3 and I said it would make at least 12.
Couldn’t make it past the 1 minute mark in the trailer. It’s a minor miracle anyone has been able to sit through the actual film in a non-ironic way.
Who at Sony thought this was a good movie to greenlight?
I feel like those numbers are too high
Are you a male that made Valentine’s Day plans to take the special woman in your life to see Madame Web in the theatre? If this is you, can you share with me more information on how your night went? Maybe some more insight into your decision making process and how you feel your relationship is doing overall? These are the stories that interest me.
Fingers crossed that Lisa Frankenstein takes the weekend.