It is no secret that the cinematic entity formerly known as SPUMC (Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters) has not been a blistering success. Even Sony knows this. Only their collaborations with Marvel around Spider-Man have done well. Will Kraven The Hunter change things?
Outside of Spidey, Venom has made money but it is critically unloved, while Morbius and Madame Web were massive disasters.
If you consider the Spider-Man movies to really be part of the MCU, then the whole thing has become a punchline.
That might be about to change. Director J.C. Chandor has some serious chops. Margin Call remains a superior financial movie to the glossier The Big Short. A Most Violent Year and All Is Lost are superb. Triple Frontier showed his action abilities.
In an interview with ComicBook.com, (reported via Dark Horizons) he didn’t shy away from talking about the shortcomings of SPUMC and says he hopes to buck the trend:
“I don’t want to get too into the nitty-gritty of it, but here’s what I would say: for me as a filmmaker, my number one goal, especially, quite frankly, over the last couple of years where you guys are deep in this world…some of the fans out there, a lot of the fans, were upset with certain decisions and certain outcomes [of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe]
Then with other films, they’ve gone on to be tremendous successes. So there’s been there’s been a mixed success rate. 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.
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.”
Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars as Kraven, with Russel Crowe as his father Nikolai Kravinoff. Kraven the Hunter co-stars Fred Hechinger as Kraven’s estranged half-brother Dmitri Smerdyakov/Chameleon, Alessandro Nivola as Russian mercenary Aleksei Sytsevich/The Rhino, Ariana DeBose as voodoo priestess Calypso, and Christopher Abbott as the mercenary known as The Foreigner.
Kraven the Hunter is arriving in cinemas on December 13th this year. It is R-rated, well-cast, and directed by Chandor. This might be it. This might be how we take refuge from Wicked.