5 reasons why Kraven The Hunter flopped at the box office

It was an important — if disappointing — weekend at the box office. Warner Bros. released A new “Lord of the Rings” movie was released in the form of the animated film “The War of the Rohirrim,” which grossed just under $5 million. Even worse is what happened to Sony Pictures and the studio’s latest Marvel Comics adaptation, “Kraven the Hunter.” The film, centered around the eponymous Spider-Man villain, now holds the distinction of earning one of the worst opening weekends for a Marvel film ever, and will go down as one of the biggest bombs of the year.

J.C. Chandor’s “Kraven the Hunter” opened with $11 million domestically, finishing third on the charts behind Disney’s “Moana 2” ($26.6 million) and “Wicked” ($22.5 million), both Among the highest grossing films. The most profitable films of the year. Outside audiences won’t vouch for Sony here either; The R-rated comic book movie earned just $15 million internationally. A $26 million global debut for a film with a $110 million budget — before marketing — is hardly a disaster. I notice, “Craven” had an even worse start than Sony’s “Madame Web.” Which stumbled out of the gate with a $15.3 million debut earlier this year.

So, what went wrong here? How did Sony stumble on another Marvel movie so badly? Who is responsible for this failure of epic proportions? We’ll take a look at the biggest reasons why Kraven the Hunter had a disastrous start to his theatrical career. Let’s get into it.

The biggest problem with “Kraven the Hunter” is that it’s not a good movie. Usually, it is best not to say that a film is good or not good, as it is generally a matter of opinion. However, in this case, the distaste for this “Spider-Man” spin-off is almost universal. As of this writing, the film has an abysmal 15% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Yes, the audience rating is 73%, but that doesn’t matter when so few people have seen the movie. Average audience reaction gets you nowhere.

/ Whitney Sebold film He described “Craven” as a “stupid but entertaining” film in a rating of 5 out of 10. Unfortunately, this was as close as one could find to this film, except for the few critics who dissented from the general public. For Sony, the best they can hope for is that audiences will check out this product once it’s on for streaming and VOD out of morbid curiosity. Right now, this isn’t a “poison” situation where critics don’t like him but audiences love him, allowing him to flourish on a theatrical level.

One of the biggest problems with “Kraven,” when coupled with its terrible critical reception, is that audiences had quite a few other options to choose from. For anyone who was simply committed to going to the movies over the weekend, they didn’t have to stop there. If someone wants to watch an R-rated action movie, they can simply watch “Gladiator II” instead. To this end, They could even see the movie “The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim.”

Aside from that, “Moana 2” and “Wicked”, both of which did very well with audiences, continued to crush it over the weekend. Why watch something that could be so disappointing when people have been singing these fans’ praises for weeks now? This doesn’t mean anything about the “Red One” or… Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar was re-released with shocking success. The point is, the timing wasn’t on Sony’s side either.

Not that the lower budget would necessarily have made “Kraven the Hunter” more popular, but it certainly doesn’t help matters that Sony spent $110 million to make this R-rated critical disaster. Some of that certainly had to do with last year’s SAG and WGA strike delays, which resulted in a $20 million budget increase. However, $90 million is still a disaster.

Yes, Sony has a co-producer here in TSG Entertainment, so you won’t have to absorb the full blow. All this means at the moment is that two companies are still suffering, rather than one, only suffering to a slightly lesser extent. It is also worth remembering that “Morbius” movie of 2022, despite its great failure at the box officeIts budget was only $75 million. This allowed Sony to mitigate risks. When one reaches that range of $100 million or more, the risk becomes much greater and needs a large global audience. No matter what might happen for the future of this franchise, Sony better find a way to cut these budgets unless Spider-Man is actually in the movie.

Another thing worth pointing out is that no studio has been able to successfully launch a new superhero property that isn’t based on an already established character (or characters) on the big screen in years. The closest we’ve come is “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”, but, with all due respect, until Part 2 arrives, this will be a solo work. Meanwhile, films like “Eternals,” “Blue Beetle,” “Black Adam,” “Bloodshot,” and others failed to spawn new solo franchises. “Kraven the Hunter” now joins that ever-growing list.

A big part of the problem is that no one outside of hardcore comic book readers knows who Kraven is. It’s connected to one of the most classic “Spider-Man” stories, “Kraven’s Last Hunt,” but that doesn’t go any further, especially since this isn’t an adaptation of that specific story. It should also be noted that relatively unknown champions may still be at the center of a big hit. The 2014 film “Guardians of the Galaxy” was a huge success for Marvel Studios Despite the fact that those characters were completely unknown. The main difference? James Gunn’s film was met with a great deal of praise. This only works with really good movies. Mediocrity can’t get the job done when there’s no big name.

Audiences are wiser than studios often seem to give them credit for. Are the majority of moviegoers immersed in the trenches of the Marvel Universe, and concerned about the bigger picture? No, most of them don’t really understand the difference between these Sony productions and Disney’s MCU productions. It’s just another superhero movie to them. However, they are at least committed enough to connect some dots. Hardcore fans know that Sony has dropped the ball with these spin-offs for years now. General audiences were burned by both “Morbius” and “Madame Web.” Either way, Craven wasn’t going to get the benefit of the doubt.

The fact of the matter is that ticket buyers have already been scammed twice. The “Venom” trilogy was really the exception to the rule here. the The results for “Madame Web” were bad enough to kill Sony’s plans for additional “Spider-Man” spin-offs.. This is now the final nail in the coffin. It went from bad to worse. Sony should definitely go back to the drawing board and regroup. Whether that means just making Marvel movies specifically focused on Spider-Man or taking a completely different approach to these spin-offs, this experiment is well and truly over.

“Kraven the Hunter” is now in theaters.