With The Materialists gearing up for its launch this month, Dakota Johnson is as soon as once more dominating headlines — however not only for her onscreen chemistry with Chris Evans and web heartthrob Pedro Pascal. The excitement surrounding her newest mission has reignited a much less flattering dialog: Dakota Johnson’s monitor file on the field workplace. Whereas the upcoming rom-com would possibly lastly give her a business win, many are nonetheless wanting again at Spider-Man spinoff Madame Internet, one among 2024’s most infamous flops — and Johnson has some pointed ideas about why it failed.
In a latest interview, Johnson addressed the elephant within the room with amusing, saying bluntly: “It wasn’t my fault.” That line alone has sparked a media frenzy, because the actor shifts the blame from herself to the broader business dynamics that she believes doomed Madame Internet from the beginning.
“There’s this factor that occurs now the place a whole lot of artistic selections are made by committee,” she mentioned. “Or made by individuals who don’t have a artistic bone of their physique. And it’s actually exhausting to make artwork that method. Or to make one thing entertaining that method. And I feel sadly with Madame Internet, it began out as one thing and become one thing else. And I used to be simply kind of alongside for the journey at that time. However that occurs. Greater-budget motion pictures fail on a regular basis.”
In regards to the film
In Madame Internet, Johnson starred as Cassandra Webb, a New York Metropolis paramedic who discovers she will be able to see the longer term and should shield three teenage ladies — future Spider-Girls — from a villainous Ezekiel Sims. Regardless of a promising premise and a solid that included breakout names, the movie bombed each critically and commercially. It went on to gather a trio of Golden Raspberry (Razzie) Awards in early 2025, together with Worst Image, Worst Screenplay, and Worst Actress for Johnson herself — a trifecta no actor goals of.
And but, Johnson appears unfazed as she disregarded the backlash with a shrug: “I don’t have a Band-Assist over it,” she mentioned. “There’s no a part of me that’s like, ‘Oh, I’ll by no means do this once more’ to something. I’ve carried out even tiny motion pictures that didn’t do effectively. Who cares?”
That devil-may-care angle might come off as refreshing honesty — or deflection, relying on who you ask. Critics have famous that Johnson, regardless of her well-known lineage because the daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith (and granddaughter of Tippi Hedren), has struggled to search out her footing post-Fifty Shades. Movies like Persuasion (2022) and The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019) earned reward, however commercially, her file is patchy at finest. Naturally, now the stakes are excessive with The Materialists, a glitzy rom-com that may simply mark Johnson’s uncommon win in mainstream cinema.