Kraven the Hunter Director Says R-Rated Spider-Man Spinoff Is "Gonna Surprise the Hell Out of People"

The Sony's Spider-Man Universe spinoff "finally gets its chance to be seen" this Christmas.

By Cameron Bonomolo

Like any good big-game hunter, you won't see him coming. Kraven the Hunter, starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the title role as the Spider-Man villain, was originally set to release on August 30th. After being pushed back amid the 2023 double strike and a round of "strategic" reshoots, Sony's thrice-delayed Spider-Man spinoff — which has received an R rating for "strong bloody violence and language" after dropping its blood-soaked red-band trailer more than a year ago — is now slated to debut December 13th.

"I'm extremely proud of the work we have all done together on Kraven," director J.C. Chandor told Deadline. "When the movie finally gets its chance to be seen I think it's gonna surprise the hell out of a lot of people."

According to Deadline, the delays allowed the director "to sharpen the characters and tighten the plot," which tells "the visceral story of how and why one of Marvel's most iconic villains came to be" in an origin story set before his notorious vendetta with Spider-Man.

The Triple Frontier filmmaker directs a cast led by Taylor-Johnson (Bullet Train) that 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, Christopher Abbott (Chandor's A Most Violent Year) as the Foreigner, and Alessandro Nivola (Boston Strangler) as fellow Spider-Man villain the Rhino.

Richard Wenk, who penned Sony's Denzel Washington-starring Equalizer trilogy and the action films Jack Reacher: Never Go Back and The Protègè, wrote the story and is co-credited on the script with Morbius and Madame Web duo Art Marcum & Matt Holloway. Avi Arad (Borderlands) and Matt Tolmach (The Amazing Spider-Man) serve as producers with David Householter (Venom).

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"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," Tolmach said in a recent interview. "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."

Chandor has also set his next project, an "untitled contemporary drama" described as being similar in tone to his past films Margin Call, A Most Violent Year and Triple Frontier, at Sony.

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