Dakota Johnson In Talks to Play ‘Madame Web’
Flush with boatloads of cash from the wild success of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Sony is looking to expand its Spider-Man movie universe even further. One long-rumored project is Madame Web, based on the clairvoyant ally of Spider-Man who uses her knowledge of the future to help Spidey and other heroes. S.J. Clarkson, a director of shows like Jessica Jones and The Defenders, has been attached to the project for a while, and now she may have her Madame Web.
Deadline reports that Dakota Johnson is “in talks” to star as Madame Web in this solo Sony superhero film. They describe the character as “an elderly woman with myasthenia gravis and thus was connected to a life support system that looked like a spider web.” That is certainly the first version of Madame Web that was introduced in the pages of Marvel Comics. In recent years, though, a young woman — Julia Carpenter, who is one of the characters who has gone by the code name Spider-Woman through the years — inherited Madame Web’s powers and monicker. So while it would certainly be a bold choice to cast Dakota Johnson as a senior citizen who never leaves her spider-web chair, it’s a much safer bet that she’ll be playing the Julia Carpenter version of the character, who could see the future and had more traditional Spider-Man-ish powers as well.
Deadline notes that the project is a “top priority” for Sony because they want to get a female-driven property” into their lineup of superhero movies, which already includes the likes of Spider-Man, Venom, and the upcoming Morbius starring Jared Leto, and Kraven the Hunter, which is being developed for Aaron Taylor-Johnson. If they get enough superheroes going at once, they could potentially create their own version of The Avengers, with some kind of crisis forcing all these characters to team up. Madame Web is also involved in the comics versions of the Spider-Verse storyline, and so she could be a way to do even more ambitious Spidey crossovers as well. We’ll see.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is still playing in theaters.