‘To me, that film was a building block,’ says Sydney Sweeney of the much-maligned comic book movie, Madame Web.
Considering she’s just starred in the film that will probably be remembered as 2024’s least loved movie, Sydney Sweeney seems to have deftly sidestepped any negativity emanating from Madame Web's dismal reception.
How so? Well, her breakout rom-com Anyone But You is still playing in cinemas, a pretty amazing feat considering that the film debuted at the tail-end of last year. That movie is proving to have real legs, and although Sweeney may have followed it with a supporting appearance in Sony’s maligned Spider-Man spin-off, she’s quickly following Madame Web with Immaculate, a fun take on the convent horror genre in which she plays a nun subjected to all kinds of peril throughout the film’s zippy runtime.
Cushioning a high-profile film’s failure with two wins seems like one of the best ways to deal with a career disappointment, and as Sweeney does the press rounds for Immaculate (a film that she also produced), she’s been quick to point out to Variety that she had far more creative control over Immaculate than Madame Web.
In fact as producer, she even hired director Mike Mohan, who she’d previously worked with on the enjoyable 2021 thriller, The Voyeurs:
‘”There’s videos and pictures of me standing in video village, helping set up other shots, holding the script and switching some things around, all drenched in blood. I felt like a kid at a playground – endless imagination, and I felt so in control”, she said.
Sweeney would go on to compare the experience to her time on the set of Madame Web, adding that “on Madame Web, it was so hard not being able to be as involved as I love being. And I felt very free with Anyone But You and Immaculate being able to have that.”
Still, Sweeney is choosing to take positives from the Madame Web experience while not openly slamming the film in the way that her co-star, Dakota Johnson has been doing. “To me, that film was a building block,” says Sweeney. “It’s what allowed me to build a relationship with Sony.”
Sweeney has Barbarella on the horizon (involving Edgar Wright), not to mention two films already in the can (Echo Valley and Eden) which featured collaborations with Julianne Moore and Ron Howard respectively. Immaculate launches in UK cinemas on 22nd March. You can catch the trailer here.
