Kraven the Hunter Isn’t Part of the MCU (But He Came Close)

Another famous Spider-Man villain is coming to town. In the upcoming Kraven the Hunter, Aaron Taylor-Johnson portrays the titular character, a comic book villain whose origins have been given the anti-hero makeover by Sony, the studio behind Venom and Morbius. And if the trailer is anything to go by, Kraven is going to be a very bloody affair.

(Note that while the trailer says “This October,” the film has actually been pushed back to August 30, 2024, because of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.)

There’s some violence on display in the footage beyond what you’d expect for a Marvel movie. And as you may have noticed, Spider-Man himself is nowhere to be seen in this trailer. You’d expect him to be right there putting a stop to all that bloodshed, so where is he?

Is Kraven the Hunter a MCU movie?

Spider-Man won’t be fighting Kraven on the big screen anytime in the foreseeable future (although he will in a video game!) because they inhabit separate continuities at the moment. Tom Holland’s Spider-Man is part of the MCU, while Kraven is part of the SSU—Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. Which is a bit of a misnomer, really, since Spider-Man himself isn’t part of it.

There have been three films in the SSU so far, all of them about Spider-Man villains who have name recognition on their own. First there was Venom, then its sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and then Morbius. Morbius was, um, not popular. Maybe the Kraven movie can help the franchise get back on track.

Kraven was very nearly in the MCU

If things had gone differently, though, Kraven would have been in the MCU. And he’d have debuted in the film Black Panther. (Chances are Kraven wouldn’t have been played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, though, since he already played Quicksilver in the MCU movie Avengers: Age of Ultron.) Director Ryan Coogler told Yahoo! Movies in 2018,

“Being a Marvel fan, you want to grab all the characters. You realize there’s contractual things. You don’t have that character. There was a Christopher Priest run [of Black Panther] that was pretty heavy, there’s a big scene where Panther’s fighting Kraven, Kraven the Hunter.

I’ve always loved Kraven the Hunter in almost every iteration. So there was a moment – ‘Can I grab Kraven?’ – and they were ‘Nah, you don’t have Kraven.’ He was one where I thought ‘Oh, man.’ But I don’t even know if he would have worked in the movie we ended up with, this was the early days.”

Obviously, that never happened, but that wasn’t the only time Kraven came this close to starring in the MCU. In 2021 screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers told Variety that at one point, Kraven was considered for the villain of Spider-Man: Far From Home, and then the same thing happened with Spider-Man: No Way Home. If rights issues had gotten in the way and Marvel Studios hadn’t been able to do their multiverse movie, we could have had a Spider-Man vs. Kraven film instead. Tom Holland told Collider in December 2021,

“For a long time, there was going to be a Kraven movie that was going to be the third movie because things weren’t working out and all sorts of different stuff. Jon pitched me this Kraven movie, which actually was really cool. I don’t want to talk about it in case that movie ends up happening down the line, but it was fun.”

We may not be getting that movie, but we are getting this movie! Hopefully Kraven the Hunter will be just as much fun.

(featured image: Sony Pictures)