Sydney Sweeney's Madame Web Is Now Streaming On HBO Max

Published Nov 15, 2026, 9:50 AM EST

Felipe Rangel is a Movie and TV Journalist ScreenRant. He has been writing about movies and TV since 2021. Felipe joined ScreenRant in 2022, working across different teams, covering everything from breaking news to features to reviews and more.

Felipe is a writer who is an avid film and TV fan, with superhero movies and series being his biggest passion. He graduated from college in 2019, having studied Journalism. Before college, he spent a month studying at the Oxford English Centre. His superhero knowledge expands to the comics, with his undergraduate thesis being "Politics Reflected In American Comics."

Sydney Sweeney is back on streaming with her controversial superhero movie based on Marvel characters, which is now available on HBO Max. Sweeney's list of movies and TV shows is filled with hits, and the actress has a huge relationship with HBO. After all, it was at the network that she got her big break, with Euphoria making Sweeney a rising star.

After that, she went on to play a key role in the first season of what has become one of the best HBO TV shows of all time, the dark comedy series The White Lotus. On the big screen, the star has started to play around with genre fare, and Sweeney's list of upcoming movies is filled with exciting sci-fi projects and more.

Among those films is the video game adaptation Split Fiction, which mixes sci-fi and fantasy, and the Netflix Gundam movie with Noah Centineo, which will see Sweeney play a mech pilot in what should be one of her biggest projects to date. However, before both of those movies, the actress came to join a tangential Marvel universe.

Sweeney is one of the major stars who ended up becoming part of Sony's Spider-Man Universe, which has that name because it focused on villains and supporting characters from Marvel Comics tied to Spider-Man, not the hero himself. Sweeney starred in Madame Web, and the film has now swung onto a major streaming service, allowing Marvel fans to experience it again.

Madame Web arrived on HBO Max this Saturday, November 14, and despite it not having been a theatrical hit, the superhero movie is expected to rise quickly on the streamer's nationwide chart, repeating the huge success the film saw on Netflix a couple of years ago. Madame Web is part of the new arrivals on HBO Max in November, with movies like Elf, The First Purge, Happy Feet, Jerry Maguire, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, The Polar Express, Scream, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, multiple Planet of the Apes films, and even fellow Marvel movie The Wolverine also joining the streaming service.

Madame Web follows Dakota Johnson's Cassie Webb, a paramedic who tries to understand her clairvoyant powers, being able to change the future she sees to keep people safe. Sweeney plays Julia Cornwall, one of the three teenagers destined to become Spider-Women and kill the villain Ezekiel Sims, who wears a Spider-Man-like suit. The movie's major Spider-Man connection comes from the fact that Peter Parker is in his mother's belly in Madame Web, with Adam Scott also playing a young version of Uncle Ben, who is Cassie's partner and best friend. Madame Web had a lot of exciting factors, but it just did not work out.

Why Sydney Sweeney's Marvel Movie Was Such A Critical And Box Office Disaster

Madame Web sits at a disappointing 10% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes based on 270 reviews, earning the infamous Rotten designation on the review aggregator. While it is better, Madame Web's 53% audience score is still far from enticing. The universally negative reception to the film led to Sweeney's Marvel movie becoming a box office bomb, as Madame Web only grossed $100.5 million worldwide against a reported budget of $80 million. When accounting for marketing and other expenses, it needed to finish between $160 million and $200 million to break even, which did not happen.

Madame Web's overall failure comes down to a wide array of factors, chief among them being the fact that the film's script was simply lackluster, with unnatural and convoluted dialogue and an uneven story. On top of that, multiple actors delivered wooden performances, with the most egregious case being how the film used ADR for a lot of its villain's dialogue, and so Ezekiel Sims became an unbearable character to watch, looking like he was dubbed over every time he spoke.

There is also the fact that the Spider-Women suits and powers only appear in a vision at the very end of the movie, teasing the film many paid to see when buying tickets for Madame Web. As such, what the Sony Marvel movie actually ended up being was a convoluted mess, though its star power and the fact that its flaws make it an unintentional comedy should help Madame Web find streaming success on HBO Max years after its theatrical release.