Kraven the Hunter's Aaron Taylor-Johnson Previews Bloody, R-Rated Spider-Man Spinoff
"F— yes, it's going to be rated R," Aaron Taylor-Johnson confirmed when screening the first footage from Kraven the Hunter at Sony's CinemaCon presentation in Las Vegas on Monday night. The trailer, which ComicBook described in detail, revealed the Bullet Train star as Sergei Kravinoff, who will hunt an unstoppable beast: the rampaging Rhino (Alessandro Nivola). Taylor-Johnson leads a cast that includes Oscar winner Ariana DeBose (West Side Story) as Calypso; Fred Hechinger (The White Lotus) as Kraven's half-brother, Dmitri Smerdyakov, who in the comics is the masked master of disguise the Chameleon; and Oscar winner Russell Crowe (Gladiator) as Kraven and Dmitri's father, Nikolai Kravinoff.
In a video introduction, Taylor-Johnson described Kraven the Hunter as "a Marvel movie grounded heavily in the real world."
"Anyone who's familiar with comics and the character of Kraven the Hunter knows that he is a fierce hunter — a skilled, highly-trained killer," Taylor-Johnson said. "So I think now's a good time to answer the Internet's biggest question: Will it be rated R? F— yes, it's going to be R."
The world premiere footage had more bite than Sony's PG-13 Spider-Man Universe spin-offs Venom, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and Morbius, dropping multiple F-bombs as Kraven hunts human prey with bloody precision, at one point ripping a mercenary's nose off with his teeth. Also revealed in the carnage-filled trailer were first looks at Calypso, the priestess who serves as Kraven's love interest in the comic books; Dmitri, another Spider-Man rogue who can steal anyone's face; and a glimpse at the Rhino. Unlike the mechanical Rhino suit piloted by Paul Giamatti in 2014's The Amazing Spider-Man 2, this Rhino appears to be more accurate to the comics, where Russian mafia thug Aleksei Sytsevich is permanently bonded to a near-impenetrable rhinoceros hide with a piercing horn.
Like Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and Michael Morbius (Jared Leto), Taylor-Johnson's Kraven is more roguish anti-hero than Spider-Man-obsessed villain — one who embraces his animalistic side as a killer at the top of the food chain.
"He is a hunter and from that world of hunting and there's so many aspects [to him]. What I love about that character is that he has flaws," Taylor-Johnson previously told ComicBook. "Kraven is a beautiful character. Sergei Kravinov is a beautiful character because it's someone who's really understanding themselves and has flaws. This is a character that was built ages ago and it's in a new time and era, but yeah, is he going to be the hunter that we all want to see? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely."
Directed by Triple Frontier's J.C. Chandor, Sony's Kraven the Hunter is in theaters October 6th.