Madame Web had an opening weekend that made the bad box office totals of recent Marvel releases look great in comparison.
The Marvels, for example, was the worst film in all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe from a box office perspective; it only grossed $46 million in its opening weekend on the way to making about $200 million worldwide during its entire run in theaters. And that was the worst opening the MCU had ever had.
Madame Web would kill for those kinds of numbers. In its opening weekend the Spider-Man spinoff grossed only $26.2 million in the U.S. and $51.9 million worldwide. That makes it Sony’s worst opening for one of their Spider-Man movie universe films to date. Even Morbius, which was a pretty sizable flop, earned $39 million in its opening weekend and $162.7 million during its entire run in theaters.
Madame Web would be lucky to get anywhere near those numbers at this point.
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In fact, a report in The Hollywood Reporter says the early word of mouth from the first critics’ reviews and fans to see the film was so bad, that they quoted a “major theatrical chain insider” who said that “On Wednesday night, you could actually watch advance purchase sales declining in real time as buyers were refunding their tickets … it really says something when you’d rather have Shazam! 2 numbers.”
(Shazam! Fury of the Gods grossed $36.6 million in its opening weekend.)
You have to go back to the days of the original Blade to find a Marvel movie that did this poorly in theaters. And that was 25 years ago — with a movie that cost a fraction of what a Madame Web costs to produce.
THR’s report said Sony had hoped that Madame Web, starring Dakota Johnson as the title character, would launch a whole new franchise for their Spider-Man universe, noting that “it set up a future in which the three [future superheroes, played by Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor and Sydney Sweeney] could have become a team of Spider-Women under the guiding eye of Johnson’s Cassie Webb. Now that’s not going to happen.”
Yeah, I should think not.
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