2024 was a disaster for Sony Pictures. While Venom: The Last Dance performed admirably at the box office, it still grossed less than its predecessors. Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter, meanwhile, were major critical and commercial disappointments.
As part of Sony's ongoing deal with Disney, Kraven the Hunter, which grossed only $62 million worldwide after opening on December 13, is now streaming on Disney+. With 15% on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie makes for a dubious addition to the streamer's lineup.
Kraven the Hunter came under fire for its bizarre approach to Rhino, some cringeworthy scenes—including a bizarre scream and a moving mouth/blinking eyes on a still image—and the simple fact that it was yet another Spider-Man movie without the web-slinger.
Kraven was, however, scared of spiders, and we got to see a version of Chameleon whose face changed, but whose body remained the same (resulting in Kraven meeting a miniature version of himself in the movie's closing moments). Still, if you're curious and a Disney+ subscriber, now may be the right time to give it a shot.
Kraven the Hunter was described as an "action-packed, R-rated, standalone story" of how one of Marvel’s most iconic villains came to be.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Kraven, a man whose complex relationship with his ruthless gangster father, Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe), starts him down a path of vengeance with brutal consequences, motivating him to become not only the greatest hunter in the world, but also one of its most feared.
The cast also includes Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott, and Russell Crowe. J.C. Chandor directs from a screenplay by Richard Wenk and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway.
In 2024, after acknowledging that Kraven the Hunter was "probably the worst launch we had in the 7 1/2 years [I’ve been at Sony]," departing Sony Pictures CEO Tony Vinciquerra said, "That didn’t work out very well, which I still don’t understand, because the film is not a bad film,"
"Let’s just touch on Madame Web for a moment," he continued. "Madame Web underperformed in the theaters because the press just crucified it. It was not a bad film, and it did great on Netflix."
"For some reason, the press decided that they didn’t want us making these films out of Kraven and Madame Web, and the critics just destroyed them. They also did it with Venom, but the audience loved Venom and made Venom a massive hit. These are not terrible films. They were just destroyed by the critics in the press, for some reason," Vinciquerra concluded.
Kraven the Hunter is now streaming on Disney+.