Dakota Johnson has been noticing a “bleak” trend in Hollywood that she blames on the people running streaming platforms who are too afraid to make bold creative decisions.
While on her press run for her upcoming superhero flick Madame Web, the actress slammed the entertainment industry for its lack of creativity. It’s something she particularly noticed last year while trying to sell her indie film, Daddio, which starred her alongside Sean Penn.
“We made a movie called Daddio that was sold at Telluride to Sony Classics, which was amazing, but it took a lot of fighting to get that made,” Johnson told L’Officiel, per Variety. “People are just so afraid, and I’m like, ‘Why? What’s going to happen if you do something brave?’ It just feels like nobody knows what to do and everyone’s afraid. That’s what it feels like. Everyone who makes decisions is afraid. They want to do the safe thing and the safe thing is really boring.”
The 34-year-old said that she’s “discovering that it’s really fucking bleak in this industry. It is majorly disheartening.”
She continued, “The people who run streaming platforms don’t trust creative people or artists to know what’s going to work, and that is just going to make us implode. It’s really heartbreaking. It’s just fucking so hard. It’s so hard to get anything made. All of the stuff I’m interested in making is really different, and it’s unique and it’s very forward in whatever it is.”
Johnson stars as the titular character in Madame Web, a film adaptation of Marvel Comics’ Spider-Man-adjacent character. This is also Sony’s first woman-fronted film in its Spider-Man universe.
Madame Web first appeared in an issue of The Amazing Spider-Man in 1980. Also known as Cassandra Webb, the character is usually depicted as an elderly woman with the autoimmune disorder, myasthenia gravis. Though she needs a life support system, she uses her clairvoyant powers to help Spider-Man fight crime. Another iteration of the character, the younger Julia Carpenter, was the second Spider-Woman and Madame Web. It’s unknown how the new Madame Web film will portray the character.
Madame Web arrives in theaters on Feb. 14.
