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Madame Web hit the theatres on February 14, 2024. However, the box-office reports are not promising, and the movie seems to have failed. The general belief is that the movie’s marketing campaigns were not up to par and sealed its fate very early. Fans and critics agree that the promotional campaigns were not serious compared to what was done on the previous superhero projects.
Madame Web is a superhero movie based in the Spider-Man universe. While the titular character is portrayed by Dakota Johnson, the movie has Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor, and Tahar Rahim as the other important characters. Directed by S.J. Clarkson, the movie is produced by Columbia Pictures and Marvel Entertainment, among others, and is distributed by Sony Pictures.
Disclaimer: This article contains spoilers and advises reader’s discretion.
Madame Web’s failure proves the wrong way of promotional campaigns
Fans are in no doubt that Sony did a bad job in releasing Madame Web. A unanimous voice from Marvel fans, moviegoers, and critics talks about a disjointed storyline, bad CGI, lackluster performance, irrelevant suspense, and poor execution in the movie.
There is hardly anything that the movie got right. As such, Madame Web bombing at the box office is no surprise. What has baffled critics and viewers is the method Sony employed to market the product. It would seem a large company like Sony does not realize what does and doesn’t work when promoting a superhero movie.
Sony seems to be getting promotional ideas wrong again, similar to 2022’s Morbius. For one, the company relied on manufactured memes to push the movie forward. During Morbius, they expected the meme, “It’s Morbin time” to catch up. For Madame Web, there have been many such meme-worthy dialogues and interviews that were supposed to have created hype for the movie.
Sony believed actors Dakota Johnson and Sydney Sweeney were meme-worthy draws for promotions. However, the interviews of the lead actors fell flat one after another. While talking to Variety about using blue-screen, Dakota proclaimed, “I don’t know if this is going to be good at all!”.
In another interview, Dakota failed to name any of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man movies. While it showed poorly on the franchise, she ended up being a meme herself. Moreover, none of the interviews with the actors generated enthusiasm on their part to display their work.
On top of bad interviews, there were similar images on every new poster or promotional images on products that did not reach the target audience, all are bad marketing strategies. Considering the movie's budget, it failed to live up to its mark.
What is the movie about?
Madame Web is a spinoff of the Spider-Man universe and is a seemingly origin story for three Spider-Women and Madame Webb. The movie follows Cassandra Webb, a paramedic in New York. She developed psychic abilities after being saved from death due to drowning.
She can foresee the future and has a dream about three girls, with the potential to be superheroes, being killed by a villain. While on one hand, she reaches out to the girls in a bid to save them, she also manages to find out the identity of the villain.
The villain is Ezekiel Sims, played by Tahar Rahim, who was a colleague of Cassandra’s mother and had betrayed the research team over a spider species with healing qualities. While it takes some time to convince the girls, played by Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor, the teams strategize and fight Ezekiel’s evil intentions.
Box office and critical reception of Madame Web
With lukewarm promotion, the movie opened to $6 million on the first day of its release and dropped to $2.2 million on the second day. While the wrong marketing strategies did not draw viewers to the movie, the unappreciative responses and reviews on the movie kept more moviegoers away from the hall.
Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 3.4/10 with 13% positive reviews and Metacritic scores it 27 out of 100 while CinemaScore gives it a C+ grade. Madame Web was released in theatres on February 14, 2024, and is running in theatres in the US. The movie will be available later on the streaming service Crave. However, its arrival on other streaming platforms is not yet known.
