Kraven the Hunter leapt into action to kick off CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Thursday, with star Aaron Taylor-Johnson sending a video to give the first glimpse of the Sony film to cinema owners. The footage included a look at Taylor-Johnson in costume, including Kraven’s trademark fur.
Taylor-Johnson sent in a video introducing the footage, and revealed the film will be Sony’s first R-rated Marvel feature.
“Will it be rated-R? Fuck yes, it will be rated R,” said Johnson.
The footage shows Kraven stopping a caravan of poachers and quickly killing the six of them, including by biting one man and spitting out part of his skin to the camera. It also revealed that the classic Spider-Man villain The Rhino will be in the feature, with actor Alessandro Nivola playing the role. In the footage, only his arm is shown, and he appears to have grey skin.
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Without naming the character, Nivola spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about his work in the movie last year.
“I only transform, physically, in the final moments of the movie, so it’s just a classic villain role,” Nivola said. “It had a really interesting, complex psychology and personal history to draw on, and the movie has a time jump in it, so the character changes a lot from the way he is in the beginning of the film. It was as much of an acting opportunity as any other film I’ve done.”
Sony and Johnson are betting big on Kraven, one of the more well-known Spider-Man villains from the comics. The studio, when announcing his casting nearly two years ago, touted that the actor was signed to a multi-picture deal to play the character, who debuted back in 1964’s The Amazing Spider-Man No. 15, where he was introduced by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko.
Kraven is a change of pace for Johnson, who broke out starring in the comic book feature Kick-Ass in 2010 and had a role in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, but largely has eschewed big studio features since. That started to change with a small role in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, as well as work in Sony’s Bullet Train.
J. C. Chandor directs Kraven, which has a release date of Oct. 6 and also stars Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott and Russell Crowe. In the comics, Kraven is a big-game hunter who goes after Spider-Man. He was at the center of the classic 1980s “Kraven’s Last Hunt,” in which the villain buried Spider-Man alive and assumed his identity.
Sony controls the film rights to Marvel’s Spider-Man, including a number of ancillary characters. It has found success with features that cost much less than a typical superhero fair, such as Venom, which in 2018 stunned with $856 million globally. Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Jared Leto’s Morbius followed with a third Venom on the way, along with Madame Web.
