Russell Crowe's R-Rated Marvel Movie Officially Joins Spider-Man on Disney+

Spider-Man as a character is interesting enough, and we want to see him interact with villains and defeat them. The baddies are far less compelling without, you know, a hero to fight and that's the battle that plagued Sony as they tried to build an interconnected superhero franchise without a... superhero. While the Venom trilogy became a major commercial success, Morbius and Madame Web were savaged by critics, leaving one more standing and waiting for its fate.

Kraven the Hunter is the origin story of how and why one of Marvel's most iconic villains came to be. Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Kraven, a man whose complex relationship with his ruthless father, Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe), starts him down a path of vengeance with brutal consequences, motivating him to become not only the greatest hunter in the world, but also one of its most feared. Now, Kraven the Hunter is preparing for another opportunity to find an audience on streaming. It's officially coming to Disney+, bringing Taylor-Johnson's standalone adventure under the same streaming roof as much of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and an expanding collection of Sony's Spider-Man movies.

The cast is led by Taylor-Johnson (Bullet Train) as Sergei Kravinoff/Kraven, alongside Crowe, Ariana DeBose (West Side Story) as Calypso Ezili, Fred Hechinger (Gladiator II) as Dmitri Smerdyakov, Alessandro Nivola (The Brutalist) as Aleksei Sytsevich/Rhino, Christopher Abbott (Poor Things) as the Foreigner, Levi Miller (Pan) as young Sergei, and Billy Barratt (Invasion) as young Dmitri.

'Kraven the Hunter' Was Mauled by Critics

Kraven the Hunter struggled badly with critics when it arrived in December 2024. The movie currently holds just 15% on Rotten Tomatoes from more than 160 reviews, making it one of the worst-reviewed entries in Sony's Spider-Man Universe. Audiences were considerably kinder, however, with the movie holding a 72% Popcornmeter score. That was typically the case with Sony's movies, as audiences tended to be more forgiving, viewing them as mindless entertainment while critics saw a cash grab.

Its box office performance was equally disappointing. Despite carrying an expensive production budget, Kraven the Hunter failed to turn Taylor-Johnson's character into Sony's next major Marvel antihero, effectively closing the book on the studio's run of Spider-Man spin-offs without Spider-Man.

Kraven the Hunter will soon stream on Disney+ and is also available to watch now on Netflix.