Madame Web Is Hilariously Short Of A Box Office Milestone, Adding Insult To Injury
One would be forgiven for not having thought about "Madame Web" for several weeks, but as the movie's theatrical run has wound down, it has come to our attention that its running total is in a pretty darkly hilarious place. Sony's latest Marvel Comics adaptation is currently just a few dollars (relatively speaking) shy of breaking $100 million worldwide. And given that it doesn't seem to be playing in any theaters right now, it will probably be stuck just shy of that milestone in the history books.
Director S.J. Clarkson's "Madame Web" has sold $99,312,851 worth of tickets worldwide. That includes $43.8 million domestically. Relative to what superhero movies have been making in theaters over the past 20 years, less than $700,000 is right next to nothing. Unfortunately, a combination of factors led to this film's demise. Critics were generally pretty unkind to it. (You can read /Film's "Madame Web" review right here.) More importantly, audiences didn't respond to the material either, and the film never recovered from its borderline disastrous opening weekend. The only thing that saved this from being an unmitigated disaster for Sony is the studio's thrifty spending, as the movie carries a reported $80 million budget. That's exceptionally low for a comic book film.
Be that as it may, this one is still going to lose money, at least in the short run. Who knows? Maybe over time, between VOD, Blu-ray sales, streaming, and other revenue streams, it might eventually get out of the red. But after marketing expenses and the cut that theaters take, the studio is a long way off from that. And, quite frankly, no studio is making a superhero movie in the hopes of barely breaking even. These are meant to be cash-cow propositions. But the times are changing and changing fast.
Madame Web and a meaningless box office milestone
All of this to say, even if by some miracle "Madame Web" were able to find some money in the couch cushions and get past the $100 million milestone, it would be a mostly meaningless one so far as the bottom line is concerned. This movie's fate has long been sealed. It's going to lose money (forcing Sony to rethink its strategy with future "Spider-Man" spin-offs) and is further proof that the superhero bubble is bursting in Hollywood. The experience was so bad that star Dakota Johnson has said she would never do anything like it again. That number wouldn't change the outcome.
Sony had a lot of luck out of the gate with 2018's "Venom" and its sequel "Venom: Let There Be Carnage." But Tom Hardy is set to wrap things up as Eddie Brock with "Venom: The Last Dance" later this year. Meanwhile, 2022's "Morbius" was another unmitigated critical and commercial disaster once again saved only by a reasonably thrifty budget. The jury is still out on the R-rated "Kraven the Hunter" later this year but, beyond that, Sony hasn't been able to do all that much with the Marvel characters it controls not named Spider-Man.
Looking at the bigger picture, "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" was the only outright successful live-action superhero movie of 2023. "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" was also a big hit but again, that movie features arguably the most popular superhero on the planet. The live-action decline is of major concern, and Sony's window of opportunity to capitalize on the "Spider-Man" franchise through ancillary characters seems to be drying up. So yeah, maybe saying this film grossed at least $100 million worldwide would help ease the pain. But as it stands, falling just short of that mark feels like a more appropriate ending to this movie's journey.
"Madame Web" is available on VOD now, with the Blu-ray hitting shelves on April 30, 2024.