Kraven The Hunter: What We Know So Far About Sony's Film

So far, the Marvel films have given us an intriguing slew of Spider-Man villains, including two different versions of Green Goblin, Venom, Doctor Octopus, and even Sandman (if you count the sand-based elemental in Spider-Man: Far From Home, that is). Kraven the Hunter, one of the webslinger's rogues gallery, has never appeared in a superhero film (despite widespread demand), but that will change with the release of Sony's upcoming solo film starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the ruthless predator. So, when is that going to happen? That is the first detail we will reveal in the following breakdown of the most important information we have so far about the Kraven the Hunter film.

Kraven The Hunter Is Set For A January 2023 Release

Kraven the Hunter's debut on the big screen has been a hot topic for quite some time. Director Marc Webb confirmed in 2014 that one of the character's spears can be seen in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 as a tease for his appearances in the Sinister Six film and The Amazing Spider-Man 3 before both projects were canceled. Ryan Coogler would later reveal that he intended to include Kraven in 2018's Black Panther, and Jon Watts (director of Tom Holland's Spider-Man films) has stated that he wishes he could have included Kraven in Spider-Man: No Way Home.

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Instead of making his feature-film debut in a supporting role, Kraven the Hunter will take center stage in his own upcoming solo film, which was first approved in 2018. The film is currently scheduled to be released on Friday, January 13, 2023. The lucky actor who has chosen to play the title already has a lot of experience in comic book movies.

Kraven The Hunter is played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson first appeared as a superhero in Kick-Ass, director Matthew Vaughn's brutal adaptation of Mark Millar's series of truly graphic novels, which also starred X-Men: Days of Future Past's Quicksilver actor Evan Peters. Taylor-Johnson was cast in Avengers: Age of Ultron as the MCU's iteration of Quicksilver, which fully embraces his Sokovian upbringing, despite reprising the powerless vigilante in a 2013 sequel. It appears that the British actor will have to dust off the accent he wore in the 2015 blockbuster for his spectacular return.

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Aaron Taylor-Johnson was cast in the role of Russian-born Kraven the Hunter (real name Sergei Nikolaevich Kravinoff) in the upcoming solo film in May 2021. Currently, no one else has been added to the Kraven the Hunter film cast, but there are a few Spider-Man characters who we hope will appear, such as Sergei's half-brother Dmitri Nikolaievich Smerdyakov (better known as the Chameleon). Hopefully, the man chosen to lead the project has the best interests of the fans in mind.

J.C. Chandor of Triple Frontier is directing the Kraven The Hunter film.

Antoine Fuqua (known for directing films such as Training Day and the more recent Netflix thriller The Guilty) was in talks to direct the Kraven the Hunter film in 2018 when it was still in its early stages of development. Ultimately, the job was given to J.C. Chandor in 2020, which came with a few other changes to the production from behind the scenes, but we'll get to that later.

J.C. Chandor was nominated for an Academy Award in 2012 for his screenplay for his feature-length debut film Margin Call, which he followed up by directing Robert Redford in an Oscar-nominated one-man show performance in All is Lost in 2013. He directed the acclaimed thriller A Most Violent Year in 2014, starring Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac, with whom he would re-team for Triple Frontier five years later, alongside Ben Affleck and Pedro Pascal, to name a few. It appears likely that the Netflix original action thriller was what piqued the producers' interest in hiring the filmmaker for Kraven the Hunter.

Kraven The Hunter is produced by Spider-Man franchise veterans Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach.

Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach are co-producers on the Kraven the Hunter film. Both of them also have a long history with the webslinger.

Arad was an executive producer not only on Sam Raimi's Spider-Man but also on a few episodes of Spider-Man: The Animated Series in the 1990s. Both of the Amazing Spider-Man films were also two of Tolmach's first major roles. Both men are also producing Morbius, which will be released in 2022, and stars Jared Leto as the titular vampiric anti-hero, whose first appearance in the Marvel Universe was in a Spider-Man comic.

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The Kraven The Hunter script was co-written by Matt Holloway, Art Marcum, and Richard Wenk.

When Antoine Fuqua was still being considered to direct Kraven the Hunter, a script for the Marvel film was already in the works by Richard Wenk, who had previously collaborated with Fuqua as the screenwriter for 2014's The Equalizer, its 2018 sequel, and Fuqua's 2016 remake of The Magnificent Seven. Wenk has also written The Expendables 2, Jack Reacher: Never Back Down, and the recent Maggie Q-led thriller The Protégé.

After J.C. Chandor was officially chosen to direct Kraven the Hunter in 2020, a new pair of scribes named Matt Holloway and Art Marcum was brought in for a new draught of the script. The duo, who first saw their work come to life with 2004's Shadow of Fear, have contributed to screenplays for blockbusters such as Iron Man in 2008 and Transformers: The Last Knight in 2017, and they have sole screenwriting credit for Men in Black: International beginning in 2019. Holloway and Marcum also contributed to the scripts for the upcoming video game film Uncharted (starring Mark Wahlberg and Spider-Man actor Tom Holland) and Sony's Masters of the Universe reboot.

Kraven The Hunter, according to Richard Wenk, will face Spider-Man.

With all due respect to Matt Holloway and Art Marcum, I hope they didn't make too many changes to Richard Wenk's original Kraven the Hunter script. The reason for this is that in 2018, while he was still attached to the project as the sole screenwriter, he revealed to Discussing Film that the film would see him "come face-to-face with Spider-Man." He went on to say that he was inspired by the famous comic book arc "Kraven's Last Hunt," in which the villain dresses up as the Web-Slinger in an attempt to be a better vigilante.

Personally, I'd like to see Matt Holloway and Art Marcum scrap that particular aspect, as it's a story that requires a lot more build-up in Spider-rivalry Man's with Kraven. Not to mention that the arc concludes with the villain's self-inflicted death (SPOILER ALERT). On the bright side, if Tom Holland's Peter Parker appears in Kraven the Hunter, we'll be one step closer to seeing the MCU and Sony continuity in the Marvel Multiverse merge, as has been hinted at quite a bit recently.

What will Kraven's first live-action confrontation with Spider-Man be like if it happens? How will Aaron Taylor-Johnson handle the role of a villain this time around? What could J.C. Chandor bring to the material that we haven't seen before in a comic book film? When Kraven the Hunter hits theatres in 2023, all will be revealed.