‘Madame Web’ Director Puts Final Nail In Film’s Box Office Coffin, Confirms Spider-Man Spin-Off Takes Place “In A Standalone World”
Spencer Baculi
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In confirming that the film will have little to offer audiences outside of those with a specific affinity for the web-slinger’s female allies or a morbid curiosity towards the fact that it actually went to the Clone Saga storyline for inspiration, Madame Web director S.J. Clarkson has revealed that rather than take placing in Sony’s ‘Spider-Man-without-a-Spider-Man’ cinematic universe, the Dakota Johnson-led spin-off instead exists in its own “standalone world.”
Clarkson confirmed this production fumble during a January 19th interview given to Entertainment Weekly’s Devan Coogan in promotion of the film’s upcoming release.
Speaking to her decision to take a more ‘grounded’ approach to Cassandra Webb’s silver-screen debut rather than the more fantastical and bombastic one seen in most other Hollywood superhero fare, the director explained that she did so in service of what she saw as the “psychological, cerebral nature” of the titular heroine’s powers.
“Not to sound too wanky about it, but it’s about what’s going on in [Cassie’s] head and her grappling with that,” detailed Clarkson, throwing in a spot of her native British slang. “Is she going insane? Is this real? She’s battling with that within herself and trying to understand it.”
In light of this supposed desire to keep the film from getting too ‘in the sky’ with its plot, the Marvel’s Jessica Jones and Marvel’s Defenders director then revealed that Cassandra’s story takes place completely separate from either the MCU, Sony’s aforementioned Spider-Man-without-a-Spider-Man universe, or any other established continuity.
“She’s definitely in a standalone world,” explicitly confirmed Clarkson. “I was able to just have free rein and let the movie be what it needed to be, as opposed to trying to force it into something else. That was a gift, in a way, to be able to take something and bring a fresh and I hope original take to it.”
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However, while Clarkson appears to frame the decision to exile Madame Web from Marvel’s cinematic universes as a purely creative one, given a recent whisper on the digital street, it seems more likely that the move was decided upon thanks to Sony execs absolutely destroying both the film’s internal and franchise timeline in service of chasing marketing synergy with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Per veteran Hollywood industry reporter and the eponymous founder of The InSneider entertainment news outlet Jeff Sneider, who first relayed the rumor via the January 19th episode of his and film critic John Rocha’s The Hot Mic podcast that because of the film’s setting some time in the Sony universe’s past, Madame Web‘s studio handlers “thought for some reason that Andrew Garfield was going to be Spider-Man in that world.”
“Not that he was going to be in the movie, but like, maybe this is for sequels or whatever,” he added. “But for whatever reason, Andrew Garfield was supposed to be the Spider-Man in that world.”
To this end, Sneider then alleged that following the film entering production with Garfield’s Peter Parker in mind as its resident web-slinger, “afterwards it was decided it was gonna be Tom Holland’s Spider-Man,” a change which in turn meant that “the timeline didn’t line-up anymore.”
As such, the industry veteran then revealed, “I heard that the reshoots for Madame Web, the latest reshoots – which I thought they were up to something else – but I’m told the reshoots were actually to remove all the 90s reference from the movie because someone f–ked up on doing the math as far as like, ‘Tom Holland’s age would actually be this’, or whatever it was.”
“That’s what the reshoots are for, like to address, whether it’s costumes, or style of phone they flip out, I don’t f–ing know [exactly],” Sneider ultimately concluded of his scoop. “I was told it was a real ‘someone f–ked up’ like, up high in terms of the timeline and the math, and it was just a simple matter of f–ked up math.”
As of writing, the Spider-Man-less and continuity-less Madame Web is set to crawl into theaters on February 14th.
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