Madame Web arrived in theaters last Wednesday and the movie has since taken a mauling from fans and critics alike. Whether Sony Pictures will take note remains to be seen, but it's almost certainly too late to make sweeping changes to Kraven the Hunter and Venom 3!
In some respects, it's a relief that the critically panned Marvel Comics adaptation doesn't involve any of the beloved live-action Spider-Men in any way. However, it's also disappointing given "Cassie" Webb's ties to the web-slinger on the page, and even more baffling that the story doesn't appear to take place in the same reality as the one inhabited by Venom and Morbius.
Talking to Collider, Madame Web producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura addressed the decision to leave Spidey on the shelf for yet another movie set in his corner of the Marvel Universe.
"Before I was involved there was a script, and before S.J. was involved as well. Both of us really saw the advantage in not having the burden of the attachment of all this other stuff that has gone on. You'd be silly to think you don't pay some homage to it and some acknowledgement, which we do, but it really freed us in a way to tell a pure story, I think. And so, for both of us, that allowed us to get into what I love about Dakota's journey."
"It's not just simply, 'Well, I'm gonna stand up and become the hero.' It's, 'I'm scarred. I don't want attachment. I definitely don't want responsibility for these three people. What the hell is happening to me? I'm going insane.' And then, 'What do I do now that I'm in this situation?' So, for me, freeing ourselves from that obligation, in a sense, was very freeing and allowed us to do a more complex ride with the hero."
It's interesting that Bonaventura mentions there being a script before both he and Clarkson boarded the movie because the filmmaker made similar comments during our recent conversation (which you can watch in the player below).
Clarkson made it clear she didn't even choose Britney Spears' "Toxic' for that memorable needle drop in the diner, suggesting she was very much a director-for-hire on Madame Web. Despite that, speculation continues to run rampant that there came a point where references to Spider-Man were taken out of the screenplay.
Early on, we heard that Ezekiel Simms planned to kill Mary Parker in a bid to stop Peter Parker from ever being born. That would have directly impacted the three Spider-Women's respective futures, explaining why they were pulled into the story.
Madame Web still features Mary and even makes her paramedic brother-in-law, Ben Parker, Cassie's work colleague. While Peter is born, he's never named and there are no connections to other Sony Marvel movies (in fact, everyone involved seems to have made an effort to bill Madame Web as "standalone" in the weeks building up to its release in a bid to temper expectations).