Kraven the Hunter cleared an embarrassing $11 million in its US box office opening. That sounds awful without context, but it’s much worse with additional information. We’ve all been watching the superhero movie craze die a slow death, but Kraven still represents a precipitous financial drop. Kraven is not just the least successful of the Sony Spider-Man movies but the least successful cinematic adaptation of a Marvel property since Punisher: War Zone in 2008. The lone exception is The New Mutants, which lost its wide release to the pandemic. Kraven is the worst, barring a global plague.
Box office performance is not really a fair metric for judging movies. We all love tons of films that bombed hard, but the financial performance still says a lot. It could be a predictor of future potential and a glimpse at the audience’s current view of a franchise. Kraven went up against the new Lord of the Rings outing and three tremendous Thanksgiving holdovers. Like any target on Kraven’s list, its fate was sealed.
Kraven the Hunter Bombs Hard at the Box Office
Kraven the Hunter followed the trends to their logical conclusion. Each Sony Spider-Man Universe movie has made less money than its predecessor. The Venom movies also saw diminishing returns. Kraven is the new box office low point so far, dropping well below Madame Web‘s $15.1 million weekend. Expanding the scope, Kraven obviously falls short of any Marvel Cinematic Universe offering. Three films fill the podium of Marvel box-office failures: Howard the Duck, Elektra, and Punisher: War Zone. War Zone still holds the gold medal, bringing in only $10.1 million overall. That’s a shame because Punisher: War Zone rules, and its director, Lexi Alexander, is a treasure. Kraven did a little better than War Zone on its opening weekend, but it lost to almost everyone else. Only The New Mutants breaks that trend by playing in 800 fewer theaters, most of which had strict capacity limits.
So, what’s to blame for Kraven‘s harsh box-office reception? In truth, the hunter suffered a death by a thousand cuts. We all know that a franchise film’s performance often rests on its predecessor’s quality. Kraven is following Venom: The Last Dance, but it’s mostly following Madame Web. We can reasonably separate the SSU offerings into two categories by whether they feature Venom. Audiences know that the SSU movies are terrible, prompting them to skip this one. Kraven is also a victim of superhero fatigue, which has wounded good and bad films. Beyond those two obvious injuries, Kraven has to contend with three dominant November holdovers. Wicked, Gladiator II, and Moana 2 have a stranglehold on the box office. They choked out The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim and Kraven without issue. Finally, Sony finally has to admit that no one wanted a movie about Kraven.
Kraven is better than Madame Web and worse than Punisher: War Zone. The money only tells part of the story. Recent reports suggested that Sony might consider shutting down their SSU scheme after Kraven. This awful weekend likely cemented that theory, leaving any loose threads to dangle. Once again, the world told Sony to stop, and they didn’t listen. Once again, they’re going to lose a ton of money for that decision. Kraven should start hunting for a streaming service that will take him in.
