JC Chandor’s Spider-Man adjacent supervillain comic book film Kraven The Hunter has a gory first trailer which can be watched in this post.
In the same year that also brought us the now legendary Madame Web, Sony Pictures has another Spider-Man adjacent comic book movie on the horizon: Kraven The Hunter.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars as the title villain – more of an anti-hero here we suppose – who’s on a vengeful rampage after he’s left at death’s door following a lion attack. Fortunately for Kraven (name on birth certificate: Sergei Kravinoff), the lion bite gives him superpowers, which he plans to use on his own gangster father (Russell Crowe) who rather unkindly left him for dead.
Kraven The Hunter is rated R in the US for ‘strong and bloody violence’, and there’s a considerable amount of it in the first trailer (see below). In fact, it’s quite possibly the gnarliest promo for a comic book movie we’ve seen for a while. It’s a bit murky, but we think there’s even a shot of a guy crashing into a tree and exploding in a shower of bloody goo.
Also along for the gory ride are actors Ariana DeBose as Calypso, who we understand from Wikipedia is a voodoo princess, Fred Hechinger as Kraven’s brother Dmitri/Chameleon, and Christopher Abbott as Foreigner, a murderer. Perhaps the most pleasant addition is Alessandro Nivola, one of those actors who’s been doing modestly brilliant work for years – he was Nicolas Cage’s brother Pollux Troy in Face/Off, his screen debut, and has since turned up in such films as Mansfield Park, A Most Violent Year, The Neon Demon and You Were Never Really Here. He was also great value in the underrated deadpan comedy The Art Of Self-Defense. But we digress.
Given the talents both in front of and behind the camera – JC Chandor previously made the brilliant and decidedly un-superheroic Margin Call, All Is Lost and A Most Violent Year – we’ve moderately high hopes for Kraven, even if Sony’s other comic book output has been somewhat uneven of late. (Morbius – shudder.)
The film was originally due for release this month (August), but was pushed back to December for what Deadline now describes as “strategic reshoots.” The aim was to “sharpen the characters and tighten the plot,” and it’s said that the additional photography has been “effective”.
In a message to the outlet, Chandor himself wrote, “I’m extremely proud of the work we have all done together on Kraven, and when the movie finally gets its chance to be seen I think it’s gonna surprise the hell out of a lot of people.”
Sony’s other superhero flick for 2024, trilogy closer Venom: The Last Dance, starring Tom Hardy, is out on the 25th October. The studio is said to be optimistic that Kraven will be closer to the crowd-pleasing (and ticket-selling) success of the Venom films than the hapless Madame Web and Morbius.
Kraven The Hunter is out in UK cinemas on the 13th December 2024.
