On Friday the current Sony Pictures CEO, Tony Vinciquerra defended Madame Web and the rest of the Spider-Man spin off films in an interview before he steps down.
The latest Spider-Man spin-off, Kraven the Hunter, released this month to a “Generally Unfavourable” 35% on Metacritic, solidifying the under 50% median of the Sony Pictures spin-off films on the aggregated score website. Madame Web slots into this category, scoring an abysmal 26% and CGMagazine’s review of the film calls it “a movie that never finds its footing.” This critical reception was addressed in a new LA Times interview with Sony Pictures CEO Tony Vinciquerra, before he steps down from his role as CEO by the year’s end.
Vinciquerra first insists the criticism levelled at Madame Web in particular was unwarranted, and he says “Let’s just touch on Madame Web for a moment. Madame Web underperformed in the theatres because the press just crucified it. It was not a bad film, and it did great on Netflix,” suggesting the film fared better with the audience than critical reception (for comparison, user score on Metacritic for the film is 28%). Vinciquerra then claims “For some reason, the press decided that they didn’t want us making these films out of Kraven [the Hunter] and Madame Web and the critics just destroyed them.”
Vinciquerra does mention that Kraven the Hunter in particular underperformed, but he still defends it. He said his last film launch, Kraven the Hunter “is probably the worst launch we had in the 7 1/2 years, so that didn’t work out very well, which I still don’t understand, because the film is not a bad film.” Vinciquerra then goes on to mention another Spider-Man spin off, Venom, and says the same thing happened in the critical sector, but the audience “loved it”.
Lastly, the outgoing Sony Pictures CEO said the whole Spider-Man universe outside of the mainline films needs to be rethought, suggesting the well is now poisoned and any film released as a Spider-Man spin off will potentially receive the same treatment that he feels Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter didn’t deserve.
