Kraven the Hunter Producer Explains Why Sony Marvel Movie Was Delayed to December

Kraven the Hunter is up against Sonic the Hedgehog and Lion King Mufasa at the December box office.

By Cameron Bonomolo

Sony Pictures is looking to ensnare audiences on the hunt for bloody action this holiday movie season. Kraven the Hunter — Sony's upcoming R-rated Spider-Man Universe spinoff starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Bullet Train) as the Marvel Comics character — was originally dated for Jan. 13, 2023 before being pushed back to Oct. 6 that year and then Aug. 30, 2024. Kraven will now arrive after Venom: The Last Dance (Oct. 25) and act as counter-programming to family-friendly fare like Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (Dec. 20) and Mufasa: The Lion King when it opens in theaters on Dec. 13.

"Kraven moved to Christmas because we're excited about it and Christmas is the best release period there is, when you get people with time to go back to the movies over and over again," producer Matt Tolmach told Collider. "That was a real reflection of how the studio felt about the movie. We're really excited. But that's a great move that reflects just the feeling about the movie."

The latest in Sony's Spider-Man Universe that spun out Morbius in 2022 and Madame Web in February, Kraven the Hunter now steers clear of R-rated August releases Alien: Romulus (Aug. 16), Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 2 (Aug. 16), and The Crow reboot (Aug. 23). Sony opened the R-rated romcom Anyone but You days before Christmas in 2023, its first big success in that slot since the $1.9 billion-grossing Spider-Man: No Way Home dominated December's box office in 2021.

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(Photo: Sony Pictures / Walt Disney Studios)

Directed by J.C. Chandor (Triple Frontier), Sony describes Kraven the Hunter as "the visceral story of how and why one of Marvel's most iconic villains came to be" in an origin story that is "set before his notorious vendetta with Spider-Man." The cast includes Ariana DeBose (West Side Story) as the voodoo priestess Calypso, Fred Hechinger (Gladiator II) as Kraven's half-brother, Dmitri Smerdyakov/the Chameleon, Russell Crowe (The Pope's Exorcist) as Kraven's father, Nikolai Kravinoff, and Christopher Abbott (Chandor's A Most Violent Year) and Alessandro Nivola (Boston Strangler) as Spider-Man villains Foreigner and Rhino.

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Tolmach, whose credits include The Amazing Spider-Man, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and Morbius, serves as producer with Avi Arad (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) and David Householter (Jumanji: The Next Level). Chandor directs from a script written by Richard Wenk (The Equalizer trilogy) and screenwriting duo Art Marcum & Matt Holloway (Morbius, Madame Web).

Sony's Kraven the Hunter is in theaters December 13.

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