The Internet might never stop being weird about Sydney Sweeney’s body, but she’s moving right along. She’s also not too terribly hung up on Madame Web‘s box-office implosion, either, initially opting to point out that she was only “hired as an actress” and had nothing to do with any production decisions. However, Sweeney is grateful for the film’s existence and for appearing within it because, as she recently told GQ in a new feature piece, heading into a(n attempted) franchise reaped lasting positive effects.
Enormously positive effects. As it turns out, Madame Web opened the door for Sweeney, as both star and a producer of Anyone But You, to sell that movie, which was distributed by Sony. The romcom, which co-starred Top Gun: Maverick‘s Glen Powell and sparked romantic speculation IRL, ended up grossing over $170 million at the global box office. This also paved the way for a possible sequel and for Sweeney to snag the lead role in the upcoming Barbarella. Really:
Sweeney is frank about the career opportunities that saying yes to a big franchise has given her, even if the film didn’t turn out as she might have hoped. “To me that film was a building block, it’s what allowed me to build a relationship with Sony. Without doing Madame Web I wouldn’t have a relationship with the decision-makers over there,” she says. “Everything in my career I do not just for that story, but strategic business decisions. Because I did that, I was able to sell Anyone But You. I was able to get Barbarella.”
See? Madame Web might have earned Morbius comparisons, but at least it was a force for ultimate cultural good. And if you missed Anyone But You at the theater, you can currently rent the film on Amazon Prime or Apple TV, or you can wait for the April 23 Netflix debut. Either option is better than mulling over why Dakota Johnson was unenthusiastically rambling about researching spiders in the Amazon.
(Via GQ)