Dakota Johnson calls Hollywood ‘a mess’ on ‘Hot Ones’

Dakota Johnson is putting Hollywood on blast.

The actress, 35, called the industry “a mess”‘ in a scathing critique of Hollywood during a recent appearance on “Hot Ones” for her “Materialists” press tour.

“I think it’s hard when creative decisions are made by committee and it’s hard when creative decisions are made by people who don’t even really watch movies or know anything about them, and that tends to be what’s occurring a lot,” Johnson said when asked by host Sean Evans why “Hollywood is risk-averse.”

Johnson continued: “When something does well, studios want to keep that going so they remake the same things, but humans don’t want that. They want fresh, they want to feel new things, experience new things, see new things.”

“So I don’t know,” she added. “I guess it’s all just a bit of a mess right now, isn’t it?”

Last year, Johnson’s Marvel movie “Madame Web” famously flopped, leading her to call out the “committee” behind the film.

“It wasn’t my fault,” she told the Los Angeles Times earlier this month. “There’s this thing that happens now where a lot of creative decisions are made by committee. Or made by people who don’t have a creative bone in their body. And it’s really hard to make art that way. Or to make something entertaining that way.”

 Johnson added, “And I think unfortunately with ‘Madame Web,’ it started out as something and turned into something else. And I was just sort of along for the ride at that point. But that happens. Bigger-budget movies fail all the time.”

In a March 2024 interview with Bustle, Johnson blamed the studio system for the ways in which it produces movies.

“Films are made by a filmmaker and a team of artists around them. You cannot make art based on numbers and algorithms,” she stated. “My feeling has been for a long time that audiences are extremely smart, and executives have started to believe that they’re not.”

“Audiences will always be able to sniff out bulls–t,” the “Fifty Shades” star noted. “Even if films start to be made with AI, humans aren’t going to f—ing want to see those.”

In “Materialists,” Johnson plays a New York City matchmaker who finds herself in a love triangle with her perfect match (Pedro Pascal) and her long lost love (Chris Evans).

“Materialists” is in theaters now.