Sony’s Spider-Man Universe Movies ‘Destroyed’ by Press, CEO Stresses: ‘They’re Not Terrible Movies’

Kraven the Hunter is Sony Pictures’ worst film release since current CEO Tony Vinciquerra took over in 2017, he admitted.

In the Sony Spider-Man Universe film, Kick Ass and Marvel Cinematic Universe actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson play the titular villain, a skilled hunter who targets Spider-Man after defeating all other prey in the animal kingdom.

Kraven was a box office hit in its opening weekend, grossing a paltry $11 million from 3,211 theaters. That number was enough to set an unwanted record: the worst opening of all time for a Sony Spider-Man Universe film. The R-rated action film performed similarly disastrously Madam Webwhich grossed just $15.3 million in its opening weekend earlier this year, as well as all of the Venom films and the 2022 films Morbius ($39 million). Kraven’s current worldwide box office haul of $43,877,089 is particularly terrible considering the film cost an estimated $110 million to produce. If you add marketing expenses, Kraven will suffer a huge loss.

In an interview with the LA Times, outgoing Sony Pictures CEO Tony Vinciquerra described Kraven the Hunter as “probably the worst start we’ve had in the seven and a half years since he took over,” before expressing surprise at the disappointing box office result of the film: “So that didn’t work out so well, which I still don’t understand because the film isn’t a bad film.”

In the same interview, Vinciquerra spoke about the launch of Madame Web and blamed the press for its box office failure. In fact, Vinciquerra suspected that the press was responsible for all the failures in the Sony Spider-Man universe and pointed out that the success of the Venom trilogy was imminent despite this obvious campaign by critics.

“Madame Web underperformed in theaters because the press simply crucified it,” claimed Vinciquerra. “It wasn’t a bad movie and it played great on Netflix. For some reason the press decided they didn’t want us to make these Kraven and Madame Web movies, and the critics just destroyed them. They did it with “Venom” too, but the audience loved “Venom” and made “Venom” a huge success. These aren’t terrible films. For some reason they were simply destroyed by the critics in the press.”

Here’s how to watch Sony’s Spider-Man universe in chronological order