Marvel Studios and Sony have always had a complicated relationship. Before Marvel Studios officially launched, Marvel was in need of cash and sold the rights to various characters off to studios such as Sony and 20th Century Fox.
Among the characters Marvel sold the film rights to was Spider-Man, and his catalog of supporting characters. When Marvel launched its own theatrical slate under the Marvel Studios banner, they were able to bring several of Marvel Comics’ biggest characters into the interconnected universe that would become the Marvel Cinematic Universe; however, Spider-Man and his catalog of villains and allies were kept off limits.
That was until 2015 when Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures struck a landmark agreement which paved the way for Spider-Man to appear within the MCU. Spider-Man made his official debut in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War before leading his own solo film set within the MCU with the release of 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming. This was just the beginning of what would become a years-long partnership between the two studios which has led to the highest-grossing Spider-Man films in the character’s history.
Interestingly, while Marvel and Sony were able to work out an agreement that brought Spider-Man into the MCU, Sony shot down the request to feature another Spider-Man character in what would become one of Marvel’s most critically acclaimed films of all time: Black Panther.
Sony would not allow Kraven the Hunter to be in Black Panther
When Ryan Coogler came on board to direct Black Panther, Marvel Studios brass had landed on Erik Killmonger and Ulysses Klaue serving as the film’s core villains. However, Coogler had his sights set on using one of his favorite Spider-Man villains: Kraven the Hunter.
At one point during the development process, there was concern from Marvel Studios that Klaue might not have been the best choice for the film and Coogler took the opportunity to pitch the idea of using Kraven as the secondary villain in the film to replace Klaue.
"When I took that job, Joe Robert Cole, who's my co-writer on both the Panthers, [he] had been working with Marvel and they had a line, so when I showed up, it was like, 'Hey, we have our villains. Our villains are Klaue and Erik Killmonger.' That had been decided upon,” Coogler revealed to Josh Horowitz in a recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “The outline of villains was Klaue and Killmonger, but they weren't sure. They weren't sure. Klaue felt slightly modular to them.”
As a fan of the character, Coogler approached Marvel and asked if they could perhaps feature Kraven in Black Panther as a potential replacement to Klaue. While the studio reached out to Sony to inquire about the use of the character, Sony would not entertain the idea and quickly shot them down.
"I'm a big Spider-Man fan, especially Spider-Man: The Animated Series. Kraven is in that. He's also great in the books,” Coogler shared. “I was like, 'Yo, can I have Kraven in the movie?' They were like, 'We don't think so, but let us check.' So, they hit Sony, and Sony was like, 'Absolutely not.' They came back to me like, 'Yo, we can't do it.' So, I was like, 'Okay.'”
Interestingly, this request came after Marvel and Sony had already begun working together on bringing Spider-Man into the MCU; however, Sony wasn’t interested in granting permission for Kraven to also be leveraged as they had their own plans for the character.
Black Panther could have helped make Kraven the Hunter a box office success
Kraven the Hunter was one of several Spider-Man characters Sony believed could lead their own franchise, and this was likely the key cause of Sony’s refusal to allow Marvel Studios to feature him in Black Panther. Ironically, had they played ball and allowed Marvel to use the character in the Oscar-nominated film, there is a very good chance that it would have actually helped to make the character into a box office success story.
Sony eventually made a Kraven the Hunter movie with Aaron Taylor-Johnson taking on the role in the R-rated 2024 film. Unfortunately, the film was panned by critics and fans alike making roughly $60 million worldwide against a budget of $110 million. The film flopped so hard at the box office that it became one of the worst-performing superhero films to ever hit the big screen, and lost Sony millions.
There is no guarantee that a Marvel Studios co-produced Kraven film would have performed any better. That said, one has to imagine that Black Panther would have helped to bring an increased interest in the character, which could have helped create actual buzz in a solo project exploring the character’s origins further.
That could have also helped pave the way for Kraven to become a bigger part of the Tom Holland Spider-Man films, helping Sony to achieve its long-sought-after goal of bringing the Sinister Six together. After all, it was the lack of Spider-Man and the connection to the Spider-Man franchise that failed the Sony Spider-Verse films the most, leading them to underperform at the box office.