Did Madame Web Just Kill Sony’s Spider-Man Franchise?

Madame Web is officially a critical and box office failure. Madame Web had a worse box office opening than Morbius or the 2015 Fantastic Four reboot, which has been considered the worst comic book movie release ever… until now. Critics have not been kind to the film, either; Madame Web has the franchise’s worst score on Rotten Tomatoes after nearly 200 reviews – and the audience average is barely over 50% with over 500 ratings – a sure sign that even the dedicated fans didn’t really like the film.

At this point, after four films, questionable box office returns, very little love from fans, and no real cohesion to speak of, it’s time to ask: Is Madame Web the final nail in the coffin for Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSU)? 

First of all, calling this series of film releases (Venom, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Morbius, and Madame Web) a “Universe” of any kind is being generous. None of these films has bade any significant connection with one another – nor have any of them established any major connections to Spider-Man. Thanks to the post-credits scene of Morbius, the SSU has messed up good material established in Marvel Cinematic Universe Spider-Man projects  – namely by having characters like Michael Keaton’s Vulture and Tom Hardy’s Venom inexplicably hopping the fence between the MCU and SSU. It’s messy as messy gets. 

NOTE: We can certainly separate the animated Spider-Verse movies from this conversation: few people (if anyone) ever associate those Oscar-caliber successes with anything the live-action SSU has produced – and rightly so. And yet, the final ember of hope that Sony’s Spider-Man Universe has left is that most mainstream moviegoers probably don’t consider it a franchise universe, to begin with, and don’t look for Spider-Verse, Madame Web, or Venom to offer that same experience as the MCU. It’s all about the a la carte approach. 

Going forward, it’s pretty wild to think that Sony has two more Spider-Man Universe films to release this year:  Kraven the Hunter hits theaters on August 30th, while Tom Hardy’s Venom 3 will be in theaters on November 8th. 

The Venom series has built out its own section of a fandom, with people loving the schtick of Hardy playing both Eddie Brock and voicing the Venom symbiote, creating a bizarre one-man-show appeal. At this point, fans who stuck with the franchise will likely be back to finish it out with Venom 3; even a one-off ending or post-credits cameo from any of the Spider-Man actors (or just the CGI character) would cement Venom’s place in a comedic way. But even if Venom 3 hits different for the SSU (meaning, making the franchise look good to fans), it’s still the end of that series, leaving the larger SSU with the same franchise-building challenges.

What’s really on the bubble is Kraven the Hunter. The character has gotten a recent boost thanks to Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 video game, where he was a primary villain; Kraven movie star Aaron Taylor-Johnson already has appeal with Marvel fans thanks to his MCU role as Quicksilver, and the rest of the cast (Russell Crowe, Ariana DeBose, Alessandro Nivola, etc.) come with enough star power to appeal to a sizeable range of viewers. Kraven also has the most pronounced ties to Spider-Man with its imagery of a forest of spiders dangling overhead, or characters like “The Rhino” that moviegoers have seen before onscreen, and know to associate with the Wall-Crawler. 

However, if Kraven the Hunter does as poorly as Madame Web or Morbius, counting on Venom 3 afterward would be (as stated) a moot point. Kraven’s failure wouldn’t be an SSU death-sentence because fo the fans – it would more be a question of whether Sony even greenlights more of these blockbuster-sized spnioffs, once the pipeline has been cleaned out. Madame Web arguably set the stage for four different characters to be breakouts – and not one of them seems like a good bet. Maybe that’s all the future Sony accountants need to see. 

Madame Web is in theaters. Kraven the Hunter has a release date of August 30th. Venom 3 has a released date of November 8th.