Kraven the Hunter may actually be comic-accurate! The film’s director teases the project’s comic book inspirations and a possible adaptation of Kraven’s Last Hunt.

One of the biggest running gags about Sony’s villain universe is that the studio doesn’t seem to care much about the characters’ comic book origins. Most of the storylines and characterizations of the villains used were seemingly made up wholecloth. Or, in the case of Kraven the Hunter getting his powers from being bitten by a lion in the first trailer, taken from other franchises entirely!

Yet it seems Kraven the Hunter may be taking more inspiration from the comics than fans give it credit for. When speaking about the upcoming film, director J.C. Chandor went into detail about how they tried to follow as close to the letter of the comics as they could. Specifically, the project tries to go back to the roots of Kraven from his original comic book storylines.

“I think we wanted to always be servicing the movie and making a great movie that can stand on its own,” Chandor told Comicbook.com. “And you don’t have to come into this really knowing anything. But if you do, I also wanted to take that really seriously.

“One of the fun things about signing up for one of these movies is you’re getting to try to take these, you know, generations of canon and actually take the best of it for your story and do something fascinating with it. So in our version of Kraven, I hope people will see that we’ve gone all the way back to the origin.”

“I don’t want to go too into much of the details with some of the other characters in it, but the Rhino, Calypso, certainly Chameleon – we took that same balance where even though we’ve maybe tweaked some things and updated them, it’s the spirit from those original books. I think if you know that canon and you give us a chance, you’ll see that we’re trying to build off the spirit of that original document.”

Kraven’s Next Hunt May Be His Last

Despite their bevvy of comic book inspirations, it seems that one particular comic became their guiding light for Kraven the Hunter. The comic in question? Kraven’s Last Hunt. Not only is it perhaps the most famous story featuring the villain, but it also features one of the most heart wrenching fights with Spider-Man in all of comics. If one was to ask J.C. Chandor, that’s definitely an avenue they’d want to explore in a potential sequel.

“Certainly for Aaron [Taylor-Johnson] and I, Kraven’s Last Hunt was our North Star, basically. So the character that we created, you know, if everyone comes out and supports the film and we get to keep telling this story, that is where we were heading towards. When people get a chance to see the whole film, I think they’ll see that we were very serious about what we were trying to do.”

Given Kraven’s Last Hunt involves the titular hero murdering Spider-Man and then shooting himself in the head, it’s likely that the comic won’t be adapted to the silver screen even if Kraven the Hunter somehow makes enough money to justify a sequel. Though given what Sony has done in the past to try to entice people into their films with Spider-Man, this isn’t the worst (or most sleezy) direction they could have taken.

Kraven the Hunter is currently scheduled to hit theaters on December 13, 2024. Stay tuned for all the latest news regarding the Aaron Taylor-Johnson movie and be sure to subscribe to Heroic Hollywood’s YouTube channel for more content!