Dakota Johnson: “It’s really fucking bleak in this industry”
Madame Web star Dakota Johnson has hit out at Hollywood, labelling the whole industry as “boring” and “bleak”.
Ahead of the release of S.J. Clarkson’s superhero flick, Johnson lamented the treatment of smaller indie productions like Daddio. She starred in the aforementioned film alongside Sean Penn, but creators found it incredibly difficult to sell until Sony Classics eventually purchased the rights, which Johnson said “took a lot of fighting”.
“People are just so afraid, and I’m like, ‘Why? What’s going to happen if you do something brave?’ It just feels like nobody knows what to do, and everyone’s afraid. 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,” she explained in a new interview.
Johnson also reiterated her stance on nepotism, stating: “When that first started, I found it to be incredibly annoying and boring. If you’re a journalist, then write about something else. That’s just lame. The opportunity to make fun of it I jumped at.”
Notwithstanding the significant leg-up she’s had, she said she is now “discovering that it’s really fucking bleak in this industry. It is majorly disheartening.”
Talking to L’Officiel, she continued: “The people who run streaming platforms don’t trust creative people or artists to know what’s going to work, and that is just going to make us implode.” Johnson said the kind of “unique” projects she wants to work on were the hardest to get made. “It’s really heartbreaking. It’s just fucking so hard,” she said.
Madame Web is set to be released in cinemas on February 14th, 2024. Watch the trailer below.
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