Kraven the Hunter is headed into theaters later this month, but while Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s superpowered hunter is part of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSU), Kraven is also being touted as its own film. That distinction is something that director J.C. Chandor is now focused on promoting: a grounded approach to a comic book cinematic world, emphasizing quality storytelling over universe building. Speaking with ComicBook about the film, Chandor broke down the obstacles to balancing world-building as part of the larger SSU, with pursuing his own specific character-driven R-rated vision for Kraven.
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Since Sony decided to lend Tom Holland’s Spider-Man to Disney’s MCU, the company has been trying to profit from a Marvel universe based on the Web Crawler’s villains. To everyone’s surprise, the first Venom worked quite well, hauling in more than $850 million at the international box office. Yet, Sony has so far failed to replicate that movie’s success; Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Venom: The Last Dance managed to turn a profit, albeit more modest than the first movie, while Morbius and Madame Web both bombed hard — and Morbius even bombed twice!
Tthat puts a lot of pressure on Chandor, as Sony has tasked him with creating a blockbuster movie people actually want to see, while connecting it to the bigger Sony Spider-Man Universe and introducing classic comic book characters the average moviegoer is not familiar with, such as Kraven and the Chameleon. It’s a challenge that Chandor was all too aware of during production on Kraven the Hunter:
“I have enough characters in this world that I was given by my partners in this, and I had to create new versions of those characters in some cases… and bring them on film for the first time with many of the other characters and have them all seamlessly fit into our little story for audiences who don’t know who ‘The Chameleon’ is,” Chandor told ComicBook. “How do you slowly introduce that character as the film progresses so that by the time the film ends, you’re like, ‘Oh, my God, I get who that guy is.’ How do you do all of those things while also telling a story that moves the plot of these movies along? That all ends with something people want to have more of?”
J.C. Chandor Put Character Ahead of World-building in Kraven The Hunter
When faced with the trials of writing a new chapter of the SSU, Chandor’s solution was to take a step back and concentrate his energies on the story at hand: Sergei Kravinoff’s formative years and dark family drama, as the son of Russian mob boss Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe). So, instead of making creative choices for the franchise’s sake, the filmmaker built his version of Kraven The Hunter so the audiences can enjoy it, even if they don’t follow other SSU projects.
“I don’t want to give away too many plot points, but the way that our film is structured, the rest of those worlds don’t really matter,” Chandor said. “If I told this version of this story really freaking well and aimed for quality of storytelling and then with Aaron [Taylor-Johnson] and our action team and the things we’ve come up with, I think people are going to be really excited about that… But my goal was to kind of isolate our movie, protect it and just tell, you know, a good damn story.”
Ultimately, aiming at an Earth-based, grounded story also helped Chandor achieve his goals. While the director recognizes the value of Marvel’s cosmic stories, he prefers when Spider-Man sticks to the streets. That’s the kind of project Kraven the Hunter is.
“It’s a very grounded story… my favorite storylines in the Spider-Man world are street-level stories,” Chandor said. “There are obviously some storylines that ended up in outer space and everything else, but ours does not. It’s very much based here, here in our world.
Kraven the Hunter will premiere exclusively in theaters on December 13th, 2024.
