Unsurprisingly, Sony Pictures CEO Tony Vinciquerra is defending the Spider-Man Universe (SSU).
In an interview with the LA Times, Vinciquerra reflected on his time at Sony, which ends on January 2 as part of a planned succession. When asked about his tenure, Vinciquerra said he believes Sony Pictures had “mostly good results.” One of Sony’s failures has been Kraven the Hunter, J.C. Chandor’s superhero movie starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the titular role. Kraven made $11 million domestically during its opening weekend.
Frankly, the underperformance baffled Vinciquerra because, to him, Kraven is “not bad.”
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“Unfortunately, [Kraven the Hunter, which] we launched last weekend, and my last film launch, is probably the worst launch we had in the 7.5 years, so that didn’t work out very well, which I still don’t understand because the film is not a bad film,” Vinciquerra said.
Kraven is not the only SSU movie to fail critically and financially. Critics eviscerated Morbius and Madame Web, with both films tanking at the box office. Besides the Venom trilogy, the SSU movies have been critical and commercial failures. Vinciquerra believes Sony needs to rethink the SSU because the next entry will be destroyed “no matter how good or bad it is.” Vinciquerra cited the negative press from critics as contributing to the downfall of the SSU.
“Madame Web underperformed in the theaters because the press just crucified it. It was not a bad film, and it did great on Netflix,” said Vinciquerra. “For some reason, the press decided that they didn’t want us making these films out of Kraven and Madame Web, and the critics just destroyed them. They also did it with Venom, but the audience loved Venom and made Venom a massive hit. These are not terrible films. They were just destroyed by the critics in the press, for some reason.”
Despite Vinciquerra’s optimism, Kraven might signal the end of the SSU, as Sony will reportedly shift its focus to developing Spider-Man 4 instead of more SSU entries.
Since its December 13 release, Kraven the Hunter has made over $43 million worldwide against a $110 million budget. It will stream on Netflix sometime in 2025.