We are under two weeks away from the release of Sony’s latest ‘Spider-Man’ spinoff film, “Kraven the Hunter.” Typically, this is a time when you can’t turn on the TV or browse online without seeing some ads for the film. However, Sony has decided to go one step further with its marketing of ‘Kraven’ by going ahead and releasing the first eight minutes of the film.
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That’s right, less than two weeks ahead of the release of the film, Sony has gone ahead and given away the first eight minutes of “Kraven the Hunter.” So, what’s included in the opening scenes from the film? Well, it mainly revolves around our beloved titular character in a Russian prison and ends with an escape attempt. And it’s… fine.
It’s really unusual for a studio to go ahead and release the opening of a film before the film actually is available in theaters. So, why would Sony do this? One of two reasons, right? Either the studio is confident in the film and thinks if people got a taste, they would pay the ticket price for the whole thing or the studio’s box office tracking is really low and the marketing folks are willing to try anything to get people talking about the film.
“Kraven the Hunter” is the latest attempt by Sony of start a franchise based on a ‘Spider-Man’ supporting character. In this case, the villain Kraven the Hunter. So far, with all of the attempts at turning these characters, such as Madame Web, Morbius, and Venom, into franchises, it’s only worked once—with Venom. And in fact, the other attempts to do so have been dismal failures. “Morbius” and “Madame Web” are largely seen as two of the worst modern superhero films released.
Now, that isn’t to say “Kraven the Hunter” is an absolutely dreadful film. We can’t say just yet, and there are some reasons to be optimistic. First, you have J.C. Chandor as director, and while he’s not perfect, Chandor is an interesting choice for this type of movie. Then you have Aaron Taylor-Johnson leading the cast, and he’s consistently good in his movies. Unfortunately, it’s just difficult to be totally optimistic with ‘Kraven’ when it has Sony behind the scenes, pulling the strings.
If you want to get a taste of “Kraven the Hunter,” you can see the first eight minutes below:
