Kraven the Hunter‘s disastrous opening weekend box office has been the death knell for Sony’s Spider-Man Universe and its spinoff films focused on C-level (if not lower) characters from Marvel’s Spider-Man lore. This was the make-or-break year for the SSU, as the franchise had a rare lead on both DC and Marvel, releasing three major tentpole films in 2024 (Madame Web, Venom: The Last Dance, and Kraven). Only Venom 3 managed to turn a profit ($475.5 million on a budget of $110 million) – but even that “win” was muted by the fact that the threequel saw a nearly 50% drop over the first film’s $856 million earnings. The writing is on the wall: mainstream movie audiences don’t want Spider-Man movies with no Spider-Man presence.
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And here’s the thing: nobody’s ever really it.
Sony’s Spider-Man Universe Has Had Some Amazing Stumbles
The failings of Morbius, Madame Web, Kraven, and (to a lesser extent) the Venom Trilogy are only the latest and not-so-greatest phase of Sony’s attempts to build a franchise around Spider-Man that could rival the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Back in the 2010s Sony first embarked on the idea of doing a Spider-Man shared universe – one that was centered around actor Andrew Garfield and his Amazing Spider-Man franchise. The Amazing Spider-Man got two films (in 2012 and 2014), which set the stage for two additional installments, a Venom spinoff, and a Sinister Six film that would see some of Spider-Man’s biggest villains come together.
Amazing Spider-Man 2 still earned a respectable $700M on a budget of over $200M, but in a post-Avengers world, being a shared universe launchpad that didn’t earn a billion dollars – or some backlash from fans – was seen as a branding “failure,” and the entire Amazing Spider-Man franchise was scrapped. That decision looks downright crazy in retrospect, given how badly things would go with the next phase of Spider-Man spinoffs; it looks even crazier when you consider that Amazing Spider-Man planned to build its universe around an actual Spider-Man character (with a fan-favorite actor playing him), who would have appeared in the majority (if not all) of the spinoffs. Fans waffled on the idea of The Amazing Spider-Man Universe being a true rival to the MCU; yet Sony still felt that, years later, there was room to still build that universe, with even less Spider-Man presence.
Why Sony’s Spider-Man Universe Was Doomed From the Start
Sony figured that the wider success of its partnership with Marvel Studios – and the breakout box office success of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man films in the MCU – would be enough branding hype to make fans buy into an entire line of Spider-Man-themed films, with or without Holland.
That was a fair bet to make – the problem is, Sony could never commit to linking these films with anything but the flimsiest off Spider-Man connections. Venom went three rounds without so much as a spider logo ever appearing on his chest; Morbius confused everyone by hinting at a team-up between Spider-Man villains – including, inexplicably, Michael Keaton’s Vulture, who was supposed to be part of a whole different reality. Madame Web played like a Spider-Man prequel that had been scrubbed clean of any direct references to the Web-Slinger, and Kraven the Hunter doesn’t feel like it fits in the same world with any Spider-Man or SSU film to speak of.
[RELATED: Every SSU Character We Still Want to See Onscreen]
It was already an uphill battle to put out these blockbuster-sized SSU films and turn characters like Morbius or Kraven the Hunter into franchise stars. The moment Sony decided to put these films out with no real connective tissue between them, and no real crossover connection with Spider-Man, the studio ostensibly killed all chances of them ever being successful. Even if each of these films had been a cinematic achievement (which they very much weren’t), the lack of relevance to a major character (Spider-Man) or franchise universe (MCU) would’ve still likely caused them to fall short with fans.
We live in a time when even the MCU and DCU are not sure bets. The death of the SSU is long overdue.
Kraven the Hunter is in theaters.
