Madame Web is meeting The Serpent as Tahar Rahim boards the cast of the latest film in Sony's Spider-verse. Rahim will star alongside the film's lead Dakota Johnson as well as Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O’Connor, and Isabela Merced. Much like previous castings, Rahim's role is currently unknown.
Directed by S.J. Clarkson, Madame Web will be an origin story of sorts for one of Peter Parker's mentors in the comics and in the animated series. Madame Web was created by Dennis O'Neil and John Romita Jr. and was introduced to the world through The Amazing Spider-Man #210, though many may remember her for appearing in the 1990s series with the voice of Stan Lee's wife Joan Lee. Madame Web is depicted as an elderly woman suffering from myasthenia gravis which not only inspired her name - she was hooked up to a "web" of life support machines - but also made her incapable of fighting herself, hence why she passed her clairvoyant knowledge on to Spider-Man. The movie version of the character will likely be different with Deadline reporting that her powers make her somewhat similar to the MCU's Doctor Strange.
Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless, who also penned the Jared Leto-led Morbius, wrote the screenplay which Clarkson will direct from. A previous draft of the film was originally written by Kerem Sanga (First Girl I Loved). Clarkson has experience working on other Marvel properties in the past including Jessica Jones and The Defenders.
Despite recent acclaim for playing the chilling serial killer Charles Sobraj in Netflix's smash hit The Serpent, Rahim's star has been on the rise for some time now. He received some award buzz overseas for his star-making performance in A Prophet, before going on to star in films like The Past and Day of the Falcon. Recently, he's seen more attention also due to his role in The Mauritanian which earned him his first BAFTA nomination and a Golden Globe nomination to boot. Since then, he's attracted far more attention for his talent, most recently wrapping filming on Ridley Scott's latest film Napoleon which pairs him up with a superstar in Joaquin Phoenix. He's also set to appear in Don Juan, a French musical that debuted at this year's Cannes Film Festival.
While Sony's recent Marvel films have gotten mediocre to downright bad reviews at times, the universe is still proving profitable for them. Their biggest success as of late was Venom: Let There Be Carnage which drummed up over $500 million worldwide. Morbius, however, made just over $160 million to date and was notable for having the single largest box office drop-off of any tentpole superhero film, though meme culture is trying its best to resurrect it.
Madame Web is currently slated for release on January 13, 2023.