Kraven the Hunter set to outperform Madam Web in all the worst ways

Things are looking dire for Kraven the Hunter as abysmal box office projections and brutal reviews leave it trailing even Madame Web.

It’s tough sledding for Sony’s offshoot of the Marvelverse as its latest outing; Kraven the Hunter hits theatres. A series of cascading flops has led each entry in the franchise to perform more poorly than the last.

The lackluster Venom trilogy has failed to rival its MCU counterparts and its associated spin-offs have fared even worse. While Kraven the Hunter managed to pull together a competent set of trailers to drum up excitement, moviegoers seem hesitant to put any trust in Sony’s comic-book adaptations.

The film is somehow failing to eclipse Madame Web, which prior to the release of Kraven was Sony’s worst-performing film in the franchise. By every available metric, Kraven seems destined to fall short of a story whose highest level of praise in our review was that “it’s definitely a movie”.

Kraven the Hunter trails Madame Web’s reviews and box office

Starting with reviews, our own take on Kraven the Hunter was that audiences were laughing at the movie, rather than with it. This seems to be the prevailing sentiment as the film debuted with a shockingly low critic score of 9% on Rotten Tomatoes. While there’s room for that score to improve as more reviews go live, it still falls short of its contemporaries’ early critiques.

For some context, Morbius, which was somewhat rescued by the infamous ‘its Morbin’ time’ meme, debuted at 12%, and Madame Web opened with 11% despite being “ripped to shreds” by the wider internet.

It’s not just critic sentiment where Kraven the Hunter is trailing. Variety is reporting that the film is tracking to draw a franchise-low $15 million at the box office in its opening weekend. As a similar point of comparison, Morbius opened to $17.3 million and, once again, Madame Web ekes out the win with $15.3 million.

Kraven the Hunter is fighting an uphill battle in this regard as the film is only opening in 3,200 theatres whereas every other film in Sony’s Marvel franchise screened in at least 4,000. At the very least, the media conglomerate still has the animated Spider-Verse movies which have fared markedly better than its live-action offerings.