Dakota Johnson has talked about the experience of filming superhero spin-off Madame Web – in particular acting against a blue screen for its effects sequences.
In a relatively quiet year for superhero movies, Sony’s Spider-Man spin-off, Madame Web, is the first of 2024’s offerings to emerge – it’s out in February in the UK.
Dakota Johnson stars as Cassandra Web, the titular heroine whose psychic powers give her the ability to see into the future. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Johnson describes the film as more “human and grounded” than most superhero fare, though that doesn’t mean it isn’t without its action set-pieces.
In fact, Johnson hints that she was quite perturbed by the CGI-heavy sections of the film in which she was asked to perform in front of a blue screen as people off-camera yelled stage directions.
“I’ve never really done a movie where you are on a blue screen, and there’s fake explosions going off, and someone’s going, ‘Explosion!’ and you act like there’s an explosion. That to me was absolutely psychotic. I was like, ‘I don’t know if this is going to be good at all! I hope that I did an okay job!’”
Johnson does add, however, that she “trusted” director SJ Clarkson, whose career so far has taken in a strikingly diverse array of TV shows – ranging from Doctors to the hit Life On Mars to Marvel’s Jessica Jones – and her feature debut, the 2010 comedy-drama Toast.
“I trusted [Clarkson],” Johnson says. “She works so hard, and she has not taken her eyes off this movie since we started.”
Madame Web is the latest in a string of Spider-Man spin-offs from Sony, with the Venom franchise beginning in 2018 and Morbius emerging – and launching numerous memes – in 2022. This year will see the release of two further spin-offs after Madame Web; Kraven The Hunter, starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, is out on 30th August, while Tom Hardy will reprise the title role in Venom 3 on the 8th November.
Clarkson says that Madame Web stands apart from those other side stories, though, with its plot set in 2003 and pitting Cassandra against a superpowered villain, Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), who’s on the trail of three young women (Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O’Connor, Isabela Merced) who are fated to one day become superheroes themselves.
Madame Web is out in UK cinemas on the 16th February.
