Sony’s Kraven the Hunter Bombs With One of the Worst Marvel Box Office Openings Ever

December 15, 2024, 3:45pm

Sony’s Kraven the Hunter is on the prowl for one of the worst starts for a Marvel movie at the box office. The latest in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the iconic Spider-Man villain, debuted in third place over the weekend with a franchise-low $11 million domestically from 3,211 theaters. J.C. Chandor’s R-rated action movie opened below expectations, having been projected to earn $13-$15 million in its opening weekend — behind box office bomb Madame Web ($15.3 million) — before critic reviews skewered Kraven on Rotten Tomatoes and opening-night moviegoers gave it a poor “C” grade on CinemaScore, a rarity for mainstream superhero fare.

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Kraven earned an additional $15 million from 60 international markets for a global start of $26 million — about half of the $49.1 million that Madame Web weaved in February. That movie, about Dakota Johnson’s clairvoyant Cassandra Webb, went on to finish a 65-day run in theaters with $43.8 million domestic and $56.4 million internationally for a global cume of just $100 million.

To compare, 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage made more in its third weekend ($16.5 million) than Kraven in its first. Despite opening mid-pandemic, Carnage scored the best opening for the SSU ($90 million), above 2018’s Venom ($80 million), 2024’s Venom: The Last Dance ($51 million), 2022’s Morbius ($39 million), and Madame Web ($15.3 million).

Few Marvel movies have performed as poorly as Kraven the Hunter at the box office. The only Marvel adaptations to open lower than Kraven‘s $11 million include 2008’s Punisher: War Zone (another R-rated December action movie) at $4.2 million, 1986’s Howard the Duck with $5 million, and 2020’s The New Mutants with $7 million.

Disney’s Moana 2 topped the box office for its third consecutive week with another $26.6 million added to its domestic haul ($337 million; current global total is $717 million), with Universal’s Wicked winning second place in its fourth week with $22.5 million ($359 million domestic; $524.9 million globally).

Kraven, which opened against Warner Bros.’ animated The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (No. 5 with $4.6 million), also faces steep competition from two new releases set to stampede into theaters over Christmas on December 20: Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King and Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

Co-financed by Sony and TSG Entertainment (producers on Madame Web and Venom 3), Kraven was greenlit with a reported $90 million budget before costs ballooned due to the dual Hollywood labor strikes in 2023. With a price tag of $110 million, Kraven the Hunter is likely the last of Sony’s Universe of Marvel Characters, although the studio has announced plans for as-yet-unmade installments like Black Cat and Sinister Six.

Kraven the Hunter stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Sergei Kravinoff/Kraven alongside Ariana DeBose (West Side Story) as Calypso, Fred Hechinger (Gladiator II) as Dmitri Kravinoff/the Chameleon, Christopher Abbott (Poor Things) as The Foreigner, Russell Crowe as Nikolai Kravinoff, and Alessandro Nivola (The Brutalist) as Aleksei Sytsevich/the Rhino.