Sony’s Madame Web has Marvel fans perplexed. In the comics, she’s a supporting character to Spider-Man, generally depicted as a blind, elderly woman confined to a life support system. Her powers arise from being a mutant, which gives her precognition, telepathy, and clairvoyance, often assisting Spidey with problems he can’t solve alone.
Now fans are busily debating whether she can really carry a solo movie. On r/Marvel there’s a thread in which a consensus is building that Sony should have focused on another heroine. The OP said:
I still find it hard to believe that with all these characters, who have years of solo comics, interesting stories that can be used and a reasonable fanbase, Madame web is the one that sony is most focused on making a movie, I’m not an executive but i would say it was a really bad choice.
Many replies point to Sony having a history of making bad choices, which was perhaps underlined by the terrible Morbius flopping at the box office earlier this month. Morbius writers Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless are working on the Madame Web script, which doesn’t exactly inspire much confidence.
Others underline that there are many more promising characters to adapt, including the various Spider-Women, Black Cat, and Mayday (with an interesting pitch that’d see Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst as her parents).
With Dakota Johnson cast in the lead role, it’s also obvious that the movie’s take on the character will necessarily mean a complete reworking of the concept, at which point you might as well just be making a movie about an original character.
It remains to be seen whether Madame Web is a good idea or not, but let’s face it — after Morbius, Sony has a lot of work to do in making their bizarre cinematic universe of Spider-Man side characters (but no actual Spidey) work.
Madame Web is set to be released on July 7, 2023.