Sony Pictures CEO Tony Vinciquerra Blames ‘Madame Web’ Box Office Performance on Critics: ‘The Press Crucified It’

Tony Vinciquerra may only have a few days left as chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures, but he isn’t going quietly. In stepping down from his role, effective January 2, 2025, the executive is vocalizing some of the issues he’s had to face since taking the office in 2017 and particularly in the last few years with the COVID-19 pandemic and the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes. However, speaking in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, Vinciquerra laid particular blame on the media for keeping people out of theaters.

“‘Madame Web’ underperformed in the theaters because the press just crucified it,” he said. “It was not a bad film, and it did great on Netflix. For some reason, the press decided that they didn’t want us making these films out of ‘Kraven’ and ‘Madame Web,’ and the critics just destroyed them. They also did it with ‘Venom,’ but the audience loved ‘Venom’ and made ‘Venom’ a massive hit. These are not terrible films. They were just destroyed by the critics in the press, for some reason.”

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Vinciquerra noted earlier in the interview that the failure of “Kraven the Hunter,” directed by J.C. Chandor and starring Aaron Taylor Johnson, was particularly stinging considering it would be the last film to debut under his chairmanship.

“Unfortunately, [‘Kraven the Hunter’] that we launched last weekend, and my last film launch, is probably the worst launch we had in the 7 1/2 years so that didn’t work out very well, which I still don’t understand, because the film is not a bad film,” said Vinciquerra.

Thankfully for Sony, “Madame Web” and “Kraven” weren’t the only films keeping the studio afloat this year. “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” was a moderate success, making back double its budget, while “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” made for around the same amount, managed to gross over four times its costs. Despite swirling negative rumors that have now turned into a full-blown legal battle, Sony’s adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s “It Ends with Us” was an unexpected hit, grossing over $350 million and made for a quarter of what it took to produce either “Ghostbusters” or “Bad Boys” sequel.

“We’ve been very successful,” Vinciquerra said to the LA Times, celebrating the wins he experienced in his last year leading the company, as well as his time as a whole. “We’ve beat our budgets every year I’ve been here, even through strikes and COVID, and max bonuses several of the years for all the employees. It was a good run, and the film studio was a big part of it.”

Offering some parting wisdom to his replacement, Ravi Ahuja, the current Chairman of Global Television Studios and President and COO for SPE, Vinciquerra suggested it might be time to change strategy in relation to its control of “Spider-Man” IP, as the studio’s track record may be tainted beyond recovery.

“I do think we need to rethink it, just because it’s snake-bitten,” said Vinciquerra. “If we put another one out, it’s going to get destroyed, no matter how good or bad it is.”

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