Dakota Johnson on How Streaming Executives Want Safe Projects, ‘Madame Web’ – The Hollywood Reporter

Dakota Johnson

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Dakota Johnson has been candid about why she feels the entertainment industry is “really bleak.”

In an interview with L’Officiel magazine, Madame Web The star said that through her production company TeaTime Pictures, she and Ro Donnelly aim to tell complex, detailed and nuanced stories with strong female characters at the center. When asked if she feels she has to produce projects like this in order to make them happen, the actress didn’t hold back.

“I’ve found that it’s really bleak in this industry,” she told the publication. “It’s incredibly frustrating. The people running the streaming platforms don’t trust the creative people or the artists to know what’s going to work, and that’s going to make us crumble. It’s really heartbreaking.”

She explained that she found it difficult to make things that were unique and “very advanced” in the story they were trying to tell, like her latest film Daddio. While the film was sold at the Telluride Film Festival to Sony Classics, she said it took a lot of fighting to make it.

“People are so afraid, and I wonder, ‘Why? What would happen if I did something brave?’ It’s like no one knows what to do and everyone is afraid,” she said. “That’s what it feels like. Everyone who makes decisions is afraid. They want to do the safe thing, and the safe thing is really boring.

Elsewhere in the profile, Johnson also talked about what attracted her to her upcoming film, Madame Web. The film follows Cassandra Webb (Johnson), a New York City paramedic who begins to show signs of clairvoyance and must protect three women from a mysterious adversary who wants them dead, according to the description.

“I don’t discriminate against genres when it comes to how I choose things or what I do,” she said of the film set in Sony’s Spider-Man universe. “I heard this was going to be made, and it was interesting to me that the main character’s superpower is her mind, and that she’s a woman. That’s something I can really get behind. That’s very real to me, and it’s really powerful and exciting.”