Actor Alessandro Nivola recently opened up about ‘Kraven The Hunter’ and shared details about a memorable on-set moment that turned into an internet meme.
‘Kraven The Hunter,’ Sony’s latest addition to the ‘Spider-Man’ universe, had all the ingredients for success: a respected filmmaker, two Oscar-winning cast members, and the resources to shoot primarily on location.
“I really don’t know what happened behind the scenes. On these kinds of movies, you hear about all the wranglings at the studio, and maybe there were too many chefs. I don’t know,” Nivola says. “I don’t know enough about what the process was beyond just my experience of being on set, which was really joyful. So I didn’t have any sense of there being problems behind the scenes. But a lot of that probably starts to play out in the edit with all the different opinions about it, so I really couldn’t tell you.”
During post-production, the veteran actor reflected on a scene in which Rhino receives bad news, a moment that has since become a fan favorite. In the scene, Rhino reacts with an unforgettable bird-like scream, and it was inevitable that this moment would turn into a beloved internet meme once the film was digitized.
“The way I performed it was totally silent. It was a silent scream. When I did it, everybody laughed on set. It was so weird, but they all loved it. We kept referring to it as the ‘silent scream moment,’” Nivola reveals. “So I kept asking J.C. [Chandor] during the edit if the silent scream was still in the cut, and he said, ‘Yeah, of course. We would never lose the silent scream.’ But when I saw the movie, it had that guttural voice catch, which I don’t think was as effective as it would’ve been otherwise.”
He added, “I kept asking J.C. [Chandor] during the edit if the silent scream was still in the cut, and he said, “Yeah, of course. We would never lose the silent scream.” But when I saw the movie, it had that guttural voice catch, which I don’t think was as effective as it would’ve been otherwise. Everybody thought that it was a bird-like reference, but the silent scream was just an idea that popped into my head as we were in the middle of the scene. I then tried it and it worked.
When asked about the reactions to his performance, Nivola responded:
I haven’t read much of the reviews, but my agents sent me all the trades’ reviews, which were some of the best reviews I’ve ever had for anything. In fact, IndieWire wrote three pages about my performance, and so that’s nice. But I don’t really pay too much attention to critical and fan response because it can be a black hole. I went through all of that before with Many Saints of Newark. It was another situation where my performance was praised, but the movie was not.
‘Kraven The Hunter’ is a 2024 superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. Produced by Columbia Pictures in association with Marvel Entertainment, it is the sixth installment in Sony’s ‘Spider-Man’ Universe. The movie explores Kraven’s complex relationship with his father and his journey to becoming the ultimate hunter.
