Madame Web’s Sydney Sweeney Calls Film “Strategic Business Decision”

By all accounts, Madame Web was a misfire for Sony. The movie only ended up grossing $97 million at the global box office against a reported production budget of $80 million, and it’s one of the worst-reviewed comic book films ever released. Just four weeks after its release, the film has already been pulled from theaters and released on digital film marketplaces. Despite the poor outing, Madame Web star Sydney Sweeney says the film was a major building block for her career.

“To me that film was a building block, it’s what allowed me to build a relationship with Sony. Without doing Madame Web I wouldn’t have a relationship with the decision-makers over there,” she said in a new profile from GQ. “Everything in my career I do not just for that story, but strategic business decisions. Because I did that, I was able to sell Anyone But You. I was able to get Barbarella.”

Earlier this month, Sweeney addressed the film’s poor reception in a similar manner.

“I was just hired as an actress in it, so I was just along for the ride for whatever was going to happen,” Sweeney explained to the Los Angeles Times.

What Is Madame Web About?

In Madame Web, Cassandra “Cassie” Webb (Dakota Johnson) is forced to confront her past while trying to survive with three young women with powerful futures who are being hunted by a deadly adversary. In addition to Johnson, Madame Web also stars Sydney Sweeney as Julia Cornwall / Spider-Woman, Isabela Merced as Anya Corazon / Spider-Woman, and Celeste O’Connor as Mattie Franklin / Spider-Woman. The film will also star Tahar Rahim as Ezekiel Sims, with Mike Epps, Emma Roberts, Adam Scott, and Zosia Mamet also in the cast.

“It’s really the story of Madame Web,” producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura previously told ComicBook.com. “So, in that respect, if you’re a Spider-Man fan, you’re gonna love the character because you know it from the comic books, which she doesn’t really have that big a character in the comic books, we’re doing the origin story of Madame Web. And so you meet her before she’s actually the person that you know in the comic book and you come to understand how she becomes that person. So, I think that’ll be a really fresh new terrain for the fans.”

Madame Web is now available wherever movies digital movies are sold. Sony has yet to set a date for Madame Web‘s streaming debut.

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