When Black Panther director Ryan Coogler was on the prowl for the villain of his 2018 entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the filmmaker had his eye on one in particular: Kraven the Hunter. Primarily a Spider-Man villain since his debut in the pages of 1964’s Amazing Spider-Man #15, Kraven has hunted not just his wall-crawler archnemesis, but Spider-Man’s animal-themed enemies — including the Vulture, the Lizard, and Man-Wolf — as well as the cat-like Tigra and Black Panther, superheroes who have been in Kraven’s crosshairs more than once.
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A big game hunter who spent years honing his hunting skills in the jungles of Africa, Sergei Kravinoff is a natural predator for the Black Panther: like King T’Challa’s enhanced senses and abilities granted to him by Wakanda’s heart-shaped herb, Kraven ingested mutagenic chemicals in herbal potions that enhanced his physical prowess with heightened strength, speed and agility.
Black Panther and Kraven crossed paths in 1999’s Black Panther (Vol. 3) #6-7, part of the influential Christopher Priest-penned comic run that introduced characters who went on to join the MCU in 2018’s Black Panther: Zuri, Nakia, Okoye, and the Dora Milaje.
Black Panther: Hunted by Kraven
The two-part storyline, titled “Hunted” and “Caged,” pit King T’Challa against Sergei’s son, Alyosha Kravinoff, who assumed the mantle of Kraven the Hunter after his father’s death in Kraven’s Last Hunt.
[RELATED: Kraven the Hunter Reviews Skewer “Death Knell for Sony’s Spider-Man Spinoffs”]
Kraven attacked T’Challa at a White House-hosted dinner reception for the Wakandan monarch in New York City, revealing that Hunter the White-Wolf hired Kraven to capture his adoptive brother. But then T’Challa defeated Kraven in a battle that spilled out into the streets of Tribeca before it was interrupted by the Avengers.
Years later, after Sergei’s resurrection, T’Challa fought Kraven when Black Panther was operating as a street-level vigilante in Hell’s Kitchen (in 2011’s Black Panther: The Man Without Fear #519-520). Kraven drugged T’Challa with a neural toxin before battling him across the city, but he ultimately called off his “dishonorable” hunt.
Kraven the Hunter in Black Panther
Coogler wanted to use Kraven, but he soon learned Marvel Studios didn’t hold the rights to the character. Instead, Spider-Man series producers Sony Pictures had ensnared the rights to Kraven the Hunter — and more than 900 other Marvel characters — nearly two decades earlier.
“Being a Marvel fan, you want to grab all the characters. You realize there’s contractual things. You don’t have that character,” Coogler explained to Yahoo UK in 2018. “There was a Christopher Priest run that was pretty heavy, there’s a big scene where Panther’s fighting Kraven, Kraven the Hunter.” (See pages from the visceral battle above.)
“I’ve always loved Kraven the Hunter in almost every iteration. So there was a moment – ‘Can I grab Kraven?’ – and they were [like], ‘Nah, you don’t have Kraven,’” Coogler said. “He was one where I thought ‘Oh, man.’ But I don’t even know if he would have worked in the movie we ended up with, this was the early days.”
While Sony would allow characters like Michael Keaton’s Vulture and Jake Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio to appear in the Disney-owned MCU (in 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming and 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home, respectively) through its pact with Marvel Studios, the studio reserved the option to produce its own cinematic universe separate from the MCU.
2018’s Venom launched Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, which would be followed by 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage, 2022’s Morbius, and this year’s Madame Web and Venom: The Last Dance.
Kraven the Hunter — starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the Spider-Man villain alongside Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Russell Crowe, and Alessandro Nivola as the Rhino — marks the final installment of the Sony-made spinoffs universe and is now playing in theaters. Meanwhile, Denzel Washington let slip his role in Coogler’s Black Panther 3 for Marvel Studios.
