Outgoing Sony CEO says Madame Web failed because the press "crucified" it

Tony Vinciquerra—CEO of Sony Pictures since 2017—has a stunning new explanation in the Los Angeles Times for why his studio’s less-than-stellar superhero offerings have tanked at the box office. Madame Web‘s massive underperformance was “because the press just crucified it,” obviously—not because it was blue-screen nonsense that didn’t even sync its ADR or because the film’s star roasted the shit out of it before the press even got a chance. That would mean it was partly Sony’s fault, and that would be crazy.

Vinciquerra is leaving his post on January 2, but—at least while he’s still under Sony’s roof—he’s standing his ground. “It was not a bad film, and it did great on Netflix,” he continued of Madame Web, a movie in which—in addition to the bad dub—the villain never wore shoes for some reason. (Don’t ask why; it was never explained.) “For some reason, the press decided that they didn’t want us making these films out of Kraven and Madame Web, and the critics just destroyed them… These are not terrible films. They were just destroyed by the critics in the press, for some reason.” (He can’t think of a single reason why Kraven The Hunter was “probably the worst launch we had in the 7 1/2 years” he’d been at the studio either. It’s a mystery!)

For the record, even if most people know Madame Web is bad, some still liked it anyway. (And even more like Spider-Man spinoffs in general). In April, news editor Drew Gillis even owned up to loving Madame Web “without a hint of irony” for its “confluence of so many different, unique kinds of bad that it adds up to something, if not good, kind of great.” This writer is inclined to agree (and promises she didn’t attend any secret meetings with the press to stop Sony’s spinoffs), but that doesn’t change the fact that—like Morbius before it—the buzz around the film’s second run was not because people thought it was an Oscar contender. 

At least a question from the outlet about whether or not Sony needs to rethink its Spider-Man strategy gave Vinciquerra the opportunity to pull out this banger of a response: “I do think we need to rethink it, just because it’s snake-bitten. If we put another one out, it’s going to get destroyed, no matter how good or bad it is.” Fingers crossed that whoever Sony hires to pull the venom out of that bite also met up with Dakota Johnson’s mom when she was in the Amazon researching spiders just before she died.