‘Kraven the Hunter’ is expected to struggle at the box office, with predictions of just $11–12 million in domestic earnings for its opening weekend. This marks another setback for Sony, whose approach to bringing Spider-Man villains and their stories to the big screen has often fallen flat.
From ‘Madame Web’ to ‘Morbius,’ Sony’s attempts to expand its Spider-Man Universe have mostly failed to meet expectations. ‘Kraven the Hunter’ appears to follow the same pattern though this could have been avoided if ‘Black Panther’ director Ryan Coogler had a chance to add Kraven into his own storyline.
Coogler had hoped to use Kraven as the main villain in ‘Black Panther,’ inspired by the 1999 comic storyline ‘Black Panther (Vol. 3) #6–7’ by Christopher Priest. But Sony held the rights to the Marvel character along with hundreds of others, preventing the collaboration from happening.
“I’ve always loved Kraven the Hunter in almost every iteration. So, there was a moment – ‘Can I grab Kraven?’ – and they were ‘like,’ ‘Nah, you don’t have Kraven,’” Coogler told Yahoo UK a few years ago. “He was one where I thought ‘Oh, man.’ But I don’t even know if he would have worked in the movie we ended up with; this was the early days.”
A clash between Kraven and T’Challa had the potential to draw interest from viewers and deliver a strong story. Priest’s comic had already established a compelling conflict between the two, offering a solid blueprint for the big screen.
In the two-part story, T’Challa faced Alyosha Kravinoff, the son of Sergei Kravinoff, who took up his father’s mantle after the events of ‘Kraven’s Last Hunt.’
Alyosha ambushed T’Challa during a reception hosted by the White House in New York City, revealing that White-Wolf had hired him to capture the king. The battle between the two spilled onto the streets of Tribeca before the Avengers arrived.
Years later, in 2011’s ‘Black Panther: The Man Without Fear #519–520,’ T’Challa also fought Sergei himself after his resurrection. Kraven drugged the Wakandan ruler with a neural toxin and battled him throughout Hell’s Kitchen until calling off his pursuit, deeming it dishonorable.
With a few changes here and there to fit into the MCU, a similar story could have been more successful than Sony’s attempt at carrying Kraven’s origin to the big screen. Especially since audiences have grown tired of standalone movies redeeming villains by turning them into anti-heroes.
That, in addition to weak plotlines, resulted in consistently poor box office performance for Sony in recent years. No wonder the studio now decided to turn its focus to ‘Spider-Man 4’ and ‘Beyond the Spider-Verse’ instead of more spinoffs.
