Emma Roberts is sharing her thoughts on why Madame Web flopped at the box office.
In an interview with Variety, the 33-year-old actress said, in a nutshell, Hollywood is unpredictable, and anyone who thinks they can predict a movie’s fate doesn’t really have a clue. A little luck and timing also helps.
“Things work; things don’t work. Everyone likes to act like they can predict if they’re going to work or they’re not,” she told the outlet. “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.”
The S.J. Clarkson-directed Marvel Comics film — starring Roberts, Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor, Tahar Rahim, Mike Epps and Adam Scott — hit theaters in February. By March, the film a 12 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 57 percent Audience Score.
That the movie bombed at the box office doesn’t diminish the work Roberts put into the film, a process she said she enjoyed.
“I’m not intimidated by failure, and I’m not intimidated by people having negative thoughts about something. I personally really loved ‘Madame Web,'” she said. “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.”
As for why the movie gained little traction, Roberts has some thoughts, too.
“If it wasn’t for internet culture and everything being made into a joke, I think that the reception would’ve been different,” said Roberts, though she didn’t elaborate on how the film was targeted in such fashion. “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.”
While Roberts enjoyed her experience on Madame Web, the same could not be said about Johnson, who starred in the title role and as a paramedic named Cassie Webb who receives psychic powers following a near-death experience. She told Bustle she wasn’t surprised by the film’s lack of success.
“Unfortunately, I’m not surprised that this has gone down the way it has,” the actress admitted in March. “But it was definitely an experience for me to make that movie. I had never done anything like it before. I probably will never do anything like it again, because I don’t make sense in that world. And I know that now.”
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