The Last Marvel Movie You’d Expect Just Became a Streaming Hit Ahead of Spider-Man’s MCU Return
Spider-Man: Brand New Day arrives in theaters on July 31st, and the fourth solo outing for Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is shaping up to be a massive Marvel Cinematic Universe event. Destin Daniel Cretton directs the film, reuniting Peter with MJ (Zendaya) and Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon) while adding Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) to the ensemble. The film is also rumored to pave the way for Avengers: Doomsday, making it one of the most consequential releases of Marvel’s Multiversal Saga. Given the scale of the project and the record-breaking response to its marketing rollout, interest in all things Spider-Man is high. That surge of attention has produced an unlikely side effect, pulling one of the most unexpected titles in Sony’s catalog back into the streaming spotlight.
Kraven the Hunter has quietly climbed to the seventh spot in Prime Video’s worldwide movie rankings. J.C. Chandor’s 2024 origin story follows Sergei Kravinoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) as he transforms from a traumatized child into a ruthless hunter of criminals, tracing his fractured relationship with his crime lord father, Nikolai (Russell Crowe). Kraven the Hunter emerged from Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, a shared continuity built around the wall crawler’s rogues gallery, and it carries no direct ties to the MCU or to Brand New Day‘s story. Despite that distinction, Spider-Man fans are seemingly looking into anything connected to the brand while anxiously waiting for the next movie to drop.
Is Kraven the Hunter Really That Bad?
Kraven the Hunter earned its reputation as one of 2024’s biggest box office bombs. The film grossed only $62 million worldwide against a production budget that reportedly climbed as high as $130 million, and critics were unsparing, leaving it with a rotten score of 15% on Rotten Tomatoes. That result proved fatal for the Sony Spider-Man Universe as a whole. Kraven closed out a rough stretch for the shared continuity, following the critical and commercial failures of Morbius and Madame Web, as well as Venom: The Last Dance, which opened well below expectations domestically even though it eventually turned a profit for the studio. Sony CEO Tom Rothman has since confirmed the studio’s live-action Spider-Man spinoff slate is getting a full reboot with new talent, effectively closing the book on the shared universe Kraven was built to expand.
Despite that critical drubbing, Kraven the Hunter has undergone a notable reappraisal among general audiences over the past year. The film holds an audience score of 72% on Rotten Tomatoes’ Popcornmeter, a figure that places it well above other maligned entries from the same shared universe. Fans circling back to the film on streaming consistently point to Taylor-Johnson’s commitment to the role and the movie’s brutal action sequences as its strongest assets. Even good fan reviews acknowledge the story itself follows a fairly conventional hero origin blueprint, but there’s still a lot to be enjoyed there for most members of the audience. That gap between the harsh critical consensus and the warmer audience reaction helps explain why the film keeps finding new life outside theaters.
Streaming also remains the ideal venue for audiences to catch up on a divisive movie. Viewers who were unwilling to pay for a ticket to a film carrying poor buzz are far more willing to press play once that same title lands on a service they already subscribe to, even if curiosity about how bad a movie truly is provides the initial pull. Madame Web followed an almost identical pattern when it arrived on Netflix, climbing to the top of the platform’s daily movie chart within days of its debut despite a disastrous theatrical run and some of the worst reviews in the genre’s history. The difference with Kraven the Hunter is that, after people watched Madame Web in bulk, Marvel fans still agreed that the movie was bad.
Kraven the Hunter is currently available on Prime Video. Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings into theaters on July 31st.
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