‘Madame Web’ Gets Netflix Streaming Date
It was streaming on Netflix with the subtitles on when the movie was researching moviemaking three months after it bombed at the box office
Bet even Cass didn't see this early arrival coming. Even as Sony makes up the majority of theatrical Marvel movies this year, the move of Kraven the Hunter means both of the remaining Sony Marvel films aren’t until the final quarter of the year. Sure we just finished the first third so there aren’t much of the remaining quarters left, but the only Marvel movie released so far this year, Madame Web, starring Dakota Johnson and Sydney Sweeney, will very soon be making it to Netflix. On May 14 in fact.
If that seems quick, yeah, it is. At least for what Sony’s Pay-1 window jump has been since hooking up with Netflix for its 2022 films, currently set through the 2026 slate. From a Valentine’s Day theatrical release, that’s 90 days later. Three exact months. Uncharted, the first film to walk this path, was released the same weekend in 2022 (February 18) and didn’t arrive on Netflix until August 5, though it was delayed from July 15. That’s still nearly 5-5.5 months. Morbius, the first non-Venom Sony Spider-Man villain film, took 5 months and 6 days, with an April 1 theatrical release with a September 7 Netflix date (and hit Disney+ this past March as part of the pay-2 window). We saw with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse that it took nearly 5 from an early June theatrical release to a Halloween Netflix arrival. The smash hit Anyone But You, also starring Sweeney, arrived last Tuesday, April 23, just a notch over 4 months.
It’s unclear if Madame Web’s poor reception from critics and audiences and paltry box office had anything to do with the hastened streaming arrival, however it is the attributed reason for it being made available on digital marketplaces in March, after only a month in theaters, so it very well could be. It had a gross split of $43.8 million domestically, and $56.5 internationally. Johnson plays Cassandra Webb, a Manhattan paramedic who seems to have gained clairvoyance that allows her to see into the future and the interconnected world of Spider-People, including Isabela Merced’s Anya Corazon, who lives in her building and will be Araña, Sydney Sweeney’s Julia Carpenter and Celeste O’Connor’s Mattie Franklin, though infamously all four only suit up in one of Cass’s premonitions, one of the film’s major criticisms along with, according to CBR, its lack of Spider-Man connections, omitting origin stories, and changing several aspects of Madame Web that would’ve been distinguishable.
Madame Web is directed by S.J. Clarkson, who co-wrote the screenplay with Claire Parker. In addition to the main quartet of Spider-People, the film stars Tahar Rahim as the film’s villain Ezekiel Sims, Mike Epps, Zosia Mamet, Adam Scott as Ben Parker, Emma Roberts as Mary Parker aka Peter’s mother, and Scrubs’s Kerry Bishé as Cassandra’s infamous spider-studying mother Constance.
While the next new Spider-Man related Sony movie isn’t until Venom: The Last Dance in October, there’s still two full series and five weeks left of Spider-Mondays, as Spider-Man 3 got its night this week and moves onto The Amazing Spider-Man this coming week.
Sources: What’s On Netflix, CBR