Rex (Emma Roberts) in SPACE CADET Photo Credit: Eric Liebowitz//Prime Video
Emma Roberts, who played Mary Parker in Madame Web, recently blamed the film’s disastrous failure on “internet culture and everything being made into a joke.”
Emma Roberts speaking at the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con International, for “Scream Queens”, at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Madame was a disaster on numerous fronts. The film only grossed $43.8 million domestically and just another $56.4 million internationally for a global gross of just $100.2 million.
The movie had a production budget of at least $80 million. That means the film needed to make at least $200 million to just break even. Clearly, it did not do that and the film lost millions of dollars for Sony, who produced the film.
Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced), Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson), Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney) and Mattie Franklin (Celeste OConnor) in Columbia Pictures MADAME WEB.
Not only did the film bomb at the box office, but it was also poorly received by moviegoers. The film received an abysmal C+ CinemaScore.
The grade is a C+ for #MadameWeb Did you see this film in theaters? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. #cinemascore pic.twitter.com/8iC5Is1xpd
— CinemaScore (@CinemaScore) February 15, 2024
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an 11% Tomatometer Score from critics. The average rating is 3.4 out of 10. It has a rotten 57% Audience Score with an average rating of 3.3 out of 5.
Madame Web Rotten Tomato scores
On IMDb it has a 3.9 out of 10 rating from over 75,000 reviews. Over a quarter of all reviews from the film were 1 out of 10.
Madame Web IMDb reviews
Clearly, the film was a disaster on numerous fronts. It failed to accurately market its product resulting in poor box office numbers and moviegoers were unimpressed by the actual quality of the film as well. Nevertheless, Roberts put the blame on “internet culture” rather than the film’s producers and director.
While promoting her latest Prime Video film Space Cadet, she told Variety, “Things work; things don’t work. Everyone likes to act like they can predict if they’re going to work or they’re not. And the truth is, you can’t. Things do badly, and then they blow up later on TikTok. Things do well, but then you watch them, and you’re like, “This did well?” There is no secret. It’s about doing something goodish and it hitting at the right time. Everything else is like a wish and a prayer. I’m not intimidated by failure, and I’m not intimidated by people having negative thoughts about something.”
Rex (Emma Roberts) in SPACE CADET Photo Credit: Eric Liebowitz//Prime Video © AMAZON CONTENT SERVICES LLC
She continued, ” I personally really loved Madame Web. I really enjoyed the movie. I thought everyone in it was great. The director, S.J. Clarkson, I think did an amazing job. She’s the reason I wanted to do that movie. If it wasn’t for internet culture and everything being made into a joke, I think that the reception would’ve been different.
Roberts concluded, “And that’s what bums me out about a lot of stuff, even stuff that I’ve done, is people just make such a joke out of everything now.”
Rex (Emma Roberts) and Nadine (Poppy Liu) in SPACE CADET Photo Credit: Courtesy of Prime © AMAZON CONTENT SERVICES LLC
What do you make of Roberts putting the blame on internet culture for the failure of Madame Web?
