If you want to know why Sony is fully ending its Spider-Man-less Spider-Man universe that has produced the Venom trilogy, Morbius and Madame Web, look no further than Kraven the Hunter, which appears to be the worst-performing superhero movie of the modern era, and one of the worst of all-time.
Kraven the Hunter has just ended its theatrical run with $61 million at the global box office. Looking at BoxOfficeMojo’s Top 100 grossing superhero movies of all time, it’s in 99th place for at least domestic totals, behind only Superman III. Though that list also includes things like Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers movies, and it’s lower than those. There are others that are off the top 100 list entirely like The New Mutants ($49 million) and Punisher: Warzone ($10 million), but in era of DCEU, MCU and SonyCU movies? Yeah, that’s the lowest.
This entire idea existed because Venom actually did really well at the box office, earning $856 million globally, the second film $506 million and the third $478 million. But even Morbius did $167 million and Madame Web did $100 million. I think those films were helped a little by becoming internet memes so many saw them for laughs (Madame Web in the theater was a hilarious experience, I can attest), but Kraven played it straight and it was bad, but not fun bad.
Why this film didn’t work is actually kind of a mystery given who was involved. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a sought-after actor right now and was most recently excellent in Nosferatu. Director JC Chandor did the really good Triple Frontier and Margin Call. Both pleaded with audiences that despite preconceived notions, they said the film was good and to come see. Audiences did not, and critics disagreed, with the film getting only a 16% score from 150 reviews. Audience scores were much higher at 74%, but how many people actually showed up for the film was the problem.
The original plan here appeared to be Sony setting up some sort of Sinister Six type collection of villains to fight…some sort of Spider-Man eventually, but how that was going to work was unclear. There were rumors that maybe Andrew Garfield would come back. Or maybe they could even get Tom Holland and make this MCU-adjacent. But that idea is dead, and Sony has said they’re now purely focusing on Spider-Man 4 and more Into the Spider-Verse, which I think everyone can agree is for the best.
RIP Kraven, I’m not sure you deserved better, as why would anyone make a Kraven movie, but you tried, I guess.
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