Kraven the Hunter didn't just flop—it might have killed an entire franchise. Wondering what went so very wrong? Time for a post-mortem following the film's disastrous debut.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00Kraven the Hunter didn't just flop. It might have killed an entire franchise.
00:04Wondering what went so very wrong? Time for a post-mortem following the film's disastrous debut.
00:09Well before Kraven the Hunter ever hit theaters, people knew that the movie wasn't going to be a
00:13box office smash. Madame Web and Venom The Last Dance didn't fare particularly well at the box
00:18office, and nobody expected Kraven to outperform them.
00:20Who's next?
00:21Ahead of its debut, some projections estimated that Kraven would earn somewhere between $20
00:25and $25 million during its opening weekend. That's not a lot of money for a big-budget
00:30superhero flick, and even the people behind the movie seemed to acknowledge that things
00:33weren't looking good. Kraven the Hunter director J.C. Chandor acknowledged that the other Sony
00:38Spider-Man Universe movies had given the concept a bad reputation that might damage the performance
00:42of his movie. He said,
00:43"[People have got to give us a chance and come out and support this film,
00:46and literally try to wash away some of the other stuff that's happened. Give our film a chance."
00:50Despite Chandor's plea, it seems pretty obvious that the reception of movies like Morbius and
00:55Madame Web had an effect on Kraven's bottom line.
00:58No one expected Kraven the Hunter to set a new high-water mark for the Sony Spider-Man Universe.
01:03However, there was some hope that it could at least outperform Madame Web's roughly $15
01:07million in its opening weekend. The lowest projections for Kraven put the movie's opening
01:11at just $13 million, but some more optimistic takes guessed the movie might bring in upwards
01:16of $20 million. Ultimately, Kraven beat all the predictions in the worst way possible.
01:21The movie earned just $11 million at the domestic box office in its opening weekend.
01:25In addition to doing worse than Madame Web, it earned significantly less than Sony's other two
01:30worst performers. Even Morbius earned $39 million, and Venom The Last Dance's $51 million is downright
01:36respectable by comparison. Globally, Kraven didn't do any better, earning just $15 million
01:41despite opening in over 20,000 theaters. Kraven couldn't have gotten off to a more disappointing
01:46start, and unfortunately, there's not much reason to suspect that the movie will turn
01:50things around going forward. It experienced a whopping 66 percent drop at the box office
01:54in its first Monday, which just goes to show that word of mouth isn't likely to keep the
01:58movie on life support for very long. While Kraven the Hunter's performance
02:02at the box office was bad by any metric, the problems were compounded because the movie
02:06cost so much money to make. And while the pricey visual effects usually make superhero movies
02:11expensive, Kraven might not have needed the hundreds of millions of dollars it cost Marvel
02:15to make a movie like Avengers Endgame. Additionally, Kraven took a long time to
02:19develop. It was initially conceived in 2018, but filming didn't begin until all the way in 2022.
02:24At that point, it cost $90 million to make, but reshoots for the movie were complicated by the
02:292023 writer's strike, causing the budget to balloon up to $110 million. Even at $90 million,
02:35the budget for Kraven would be a massive problem considering how little the movie
02:39made during its opening weekend. However, it's especially bad that the movie's $11 million
02:43box office take covered just half of the increased production costs. If the Sony
02:47Spider-Man universe were to continue after Kraven, it would have to find a whole new
02:50source of funds, since the movie isn't likely to make anything near a profit.
02:54You don't get to do that to me anymore.
02:56It's easy enough to argue that Kraven the Hunter failed on its own merits,
02:59but it's worth noting that the movie didn't have favorable conditions going into its opening
03:03weekend. While Kraven wasn't up against many new movies, it did need to compete against two
03:07box office giants. Moana 2 took the weekend's top spot by earning over $26 million, and Wicked
03:13continued to blow everyone away by raking in over $22 million, despite having been in theaters for
03:19nearly a month. On the new movie front, Kraven did have to contend with the release of The Lord
03:23of the Rings — The War of Rohirrim. That animated movie took fifth place at the weekend box office,
03:28earning just over $4.5 million, but it potentially siphoned off some would-be Kraven viewers.
03:33You will pay for this!
03:35With its R rating, Kraven was targeting a slightly different audience than all those films.
03:39But even there, it had to compete with Gladiator 2. Sony's movie ultimately
03:42earned more money over the weekend, but Gladiator 2 raked in well over $7 million,
03:47despite being in its third week. The bottom line is that all kinds of audiences had other options
03:51the weekend Kraven started its box office run, and people largely opted to not give the movie a
03:56chance. Granted, a different set of competitors probably wouldn't have turned Kraven into a hit,
04:01but the movie might have performed just a little bit better.
04:04Critics weren't enamored with Kraven the Hunter, and that's not very surprising. For reference,
04:08Madam Web has an abysmal 11% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In a similar vein,
04:13despite being the fan-favorite franchise of the Sony Spider-Man universe,
04:16The Venom movies have never been critical darlings, either. Considering the surrounding
04:20context, Kraven might have actually performed better with critics than some might expect,
04:24but that still isn't particularly good. Metacritic gave Kraven a score of 35.
04:28While that's sure to keep the movie off many people's watch lists, it isn't catastrophic.
04:33The Rotten Tomatoes score, on the other hand, was a little more alarming. At just a 16% approval
04:37rating, Kraven might beat out Madam Web, but that's saying very little. It's worth mentioning
04:42that audiences seem to be taking it quite a bit easier on Kraven. Seven days into its theatrical
04:47run, the audience approval score sits at 73%. This puts Kraven firmly into Morbius territory.
04:52However, the filmmakers might not see that similarity as a good thing, since audiences
04:56mostly seem to love how bad Morbius is. But it does mean that Kraven could go on to find some
05:01kind of loyal fan base in the future. Kraven the Hunter may be a misguided effort
05:05released at an unfortunate time, but the movie still has some redeeming qualities.
05:09Many reviewers agreed that, despite a lackluster story, the movie's action scenes were top-notch
05:14and made even better by Aaron Taylor-Johnson's performance. As YouTuber Zach Pope said in his
05:19review,
05:19"[He's great as Kraven the Hunter, at least in terms of the action and embodying that."
05:23Shadows on the Wall also praised the movie's leading man, noting,
05:26"[Taylor-Johnson is always interesting on screen and has an engaging, magnetic presence here.]
05:31The outlet also celebrated the performances of Russell Crowe,
05:33Ariana DuBois, and Fred Hechinger. Of course, solid acting can only carry a movie so far.
05:39Both of those reviews maligned the dialogue in the movie and noted that the actors were
05:42obviously held back by the lines they needed to deliver.
05:45"'You're just another man.' Whoever is righteous. Hunting for a trophy."
05:52Other reviewers pointed out how the uneven pacing and sloppy editing marred the overall
05:56experience of the movie, and some boiled down their criticism of the film to the simple fact
05:59that it's a boring movie. While the iPapers review also had good things to say about the
06:03performances in the film, particularly Taylor-Johnson's, it concluded,
06:07"[His presence, and slightly meerkat-esque Russian accent,
06:10is not enough to paper the cracks of the film's dwindling entertainment factor."
06:14In short, the few positive elements the movie had going for it were completely
06:18outmatched by everything dragging it down.
06:20Kraven the Hunter also faced some problems that had nothing to do with the movie itself,
06:24or with the rest of Sony's Spider-Man universe. The truth is that,
06:27even in the world of Marvel Comics, Kraven just isn't that big of a character. He's an
06:32iconic Spider-Man villain who's been fighting the Web-Head for decades, but he's never really
06:36moved outside that universe. He hasn't squared off against the Avengers quite like Ultron,
06:40and he's not an epic-level threat like Thanos or Galactus. In the world of the comics,
06:44Kraven is closer to Morbius or Madam Web than someone like Venom.
06:48The symbiote has had plenty of his own solo comic series and has even been
06:51portrayed as a hero at times. Venom has a cult following all his own,
06:55and that's a big part of why the Venom movies have found some success. Kraven, on the other
06:59hand, is really just a B-level character who only exists to play a supporting role in Spider-Man's
07:03story. You're always going to expect to see Kraven pop up in Spidey comics, but you'll almost never
07:08see him anywhere else. Because of that, it's a little surprising that Sony tried to make Kraven
07:12the star of his own movie in the first place. Kraven isn't the most famous Marvel villain by
07:17any stretch of the imagination, but die-hard Spider-Man fans still love the character.
07:21Because of his long history as one of Spider-Man's rogues, there are definitely some people who were
07:25intrigued to see what a live-action version of Kraven would actually be like. Most people
07:29probably found themselves a little lost by what they saw while watching Kraven the Hunter.
07:33There are some aspects of the character that are straight out of the comics,
07:36but in many ways, Sony's version of Kraven is an entirely different person.
07:40The movie completely rewrites his backstory, motivation, and power set from the comics.
07:44In the movie, Kraven loves his brother and hates his drug-trafficking father. He's an
07:48animal lover who, after a near-death experience, gets powers from a mysterious serum and ends up
07:53fighting against his father's criminal empire. In the comics, Kraven torments his brother,
07:57gets his powers by stealing a mystical potion from a witch doctor, and spends his life being
08:01wholly obsessed with hunting the most dangerous animals in existence. It's not surprising that
08:06the movie decided to tone down Kraven somewhat, but the comics version of the Hunter is at his
08:10best when he's at his most over-the-top. Sony's character just doesn't have the same appeal.
08:15Sony massively changed Kraven's backstory for the movie, but Kraven the Hunter might
08:19have had a shot if it had included the single most important aspect of Kraven's character
08:24from the comics. For fans of the Sam Raimi trilogy, his motivations might sound similar
08:28to another villain's.
08:30Nothing left except Spider-Man."
08:32If there's one thing that any comic book fan can tell you about Kraven,
08:35it's that his main goal in life is to be the person who kills Spider-Man.
08:38Unlike many other Spider-Man villains, Kraven doesn't have a personal connection to or vendetta
08:43against the Web-Head. Kraven just thinks that Spider-Man's powers make him the ideal target
08:46for the greatest hunt of all time. Kraven the Hunter suffers from Spidey's absence more than
08:51any of the other Sony Spider-Man universe movies. Venom has Eddie Brock to rely on,
08:55and together the two of them have their own set of enemies. Morbius can get some mileage out of
08:59his struggle with his vampiric nature, and Madame Web at least did have a tenuous connection to
09:04Spider-Man himself. Kraven, however, feels completely disconnected from the broader universe,
09:08and the character doesn't function very well without his desire to kill Spider-Man.
09:12If all the other problems facing the movie had simply disappeared,
09:15Kraven would still have struggled to get past the fact that the movie doesn't make Spider-Man
09:19part of its story. It looks like Kraven the Hunter is going to bring the Sony Spider-Man
09:23universe to a close, but what does that actually mean? Sony might not make any more standalone
09:28movies about Spider-Man villains in the near future, but the company certainly isn't done
09:31with the wall-crawler just yet. The animated Spider-Verse franchise is still very much alive,
09:36but it could be a while before it comes back to theaters. After all, production on that
09:40franchise's third installment had to stop during the 2023 writer's strike,
09:44and rumors have put its release as far out as 2026 or 2027. Meanwhile, Sony is still keeping
09:49itself involved in the world of live-action Spider-Man movies. Sony and Marvel have
09:53confirmed that Tom Holland's fourth Spider-Man movie is in production,
09:56and it's currently scheduled to start filming in 2025. We've heard some Spider-Man 4 plot rumors
10:01that suggest the movie could take place directly after the events of 2026's Avengers Doomsday,
10:06which makes sense since Spider-Man 4 is set for release on July 24,
10:092026. Even if Sony doesn't completely give up on the idea of having its own Spider-Man universe,
10:15Kraven the Hunter is likely to be the end of the version of that universe we've already seen.
10:18The MCU is charging on ahead, and Spider-Man will have some role to play in what happens next.
10:23Sony's dysfunctional universe, on the other hand, is gonna have to go back to the drawing board.