Recent movies in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe like ‘Morbius’ and ‘Madame Web’ failed both commercially and critically. Even the ‘Venom’ trilogy, despite its financial success, did not receive a positive reception from audiences or critics.
This trend has led to little excitement for ‘Kraven the Hunter,’ although its director, J.C. Chandor, is asking for the film to be given a fair chance.
Discussing the mixed performance of Sony’s previous Spider-Man projects with ComicBook, Chandor said, “People have got to give us a chance and come out and support this film, and literally try to wash away some of the other stuff that’s happened. Give our film a chance.”
He added, “I think they’ll realize that we’ve done everything we can to give them a pretty fun story. You’ll see when the movie’s over, there’s potential for a lot of things to happen. But my goal was to isolate our movie, protect it, and just tell a good damn story. And then, we’ll have opportunities to do a lot of fun things.”
Current box office projections for ‘Kraven the Hunter’ are not promising, as ComicBook recently reported. According to Box Office Pro, “there’s a very real chance that Kraven‘s entire domestic run could fail to exceed even the opening weekend take of October 2024’s ‘Venom: The Last Dance’ ($51M domestic opening, $128.8M domestic total after four weeks), the lowest-grossing of Sony’s three ‘Venom’ films.”
Set to be the third R-rated superhero movie of 2024, following ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ and ‘Joker: Folie à Deux,’ ‘Kraven the Hunter’ aims for a different tone from ‘Madame Web’ and ‘Morbius.’ Still, its expected debut of $20 million to $25 million suggests it may align with those previous box office failures.
For context, ‘Madame Web’ opened at $15.3 million in February, while ‘Morbius’ started stronger at $39 million, but quickly fell off.
‘Kraven the Hunter’ is promoted as a standalone story featuring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott, and Russell Crowe. The film is scheduled for release on December 13.
