'Kraven The Hunter' Killed Sony's Chaotic 'Spider-Man Universe'

Actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson attends the photocall for "Kraven The Hunter" on December 06, 2024 in Mexico City, Mexico. (Photo by Hector Vivas/Getty Images)

Kraven The Hunter marks the end of Sony’s strange experiment—to create a Spider-Man cinematic universe without Spider-Man.

The Venom trilogy, starring Tom Hardy, is the only success story to emerge from Sony’s cinematic universe, but each Venom sequel made less money at the box office than the previous entry, sputtering out with Venom: The Last Dance.

Kraven (starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson) debuted with a middling 15% on Rotten Tomatoes, in the same ballpark as the widely-mocked Madame Web (11%) and Morbius (15%).

Online commentators posted memes to mark the death of Sony’s ill-fated experiment.

Kraven the Hunter marks the final attempt to turn Sony’s “Spider-Man Universe” into a beloved franchise.

Turns out, that’s hard to do without Spider-Man.

Sony’s Spider-Man Universe was Sony’s attempt to echo the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) by creating their own interconnected superhero movie franchise.

The universe was populated by Spider-Man’s villains and allies, but not the web-slinger himself.

It might seem an odd move to name a franchise after Spider-Man and never have him appear, but everything about Sony’s universe has been entertainingly messy, right from the very beginning.

Sony’s Spider-Man Universe was introduced in 2017 as “Sony's Marvel Universe,” later revised to "Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters," which created the unfortunate acronym, “SPUMC.”

SPUMC never became a household name the way the MCU did (perhaps for good reason) and the project was renamed “Sony’s Spider-Man Universe” in 2021.

While Sony technically owns the film rights to Spider-Man, the studio had come to an agreement in 2015 with Marvel Studios, allowing Spider-Man (played by Tom Holland) to enter the MCU, which helped boost Marvel’s box office success.

Sony still had the film rights to multiple Spider-Man villains and side-characters, and thus, went to work building its own universe.

In 1999, Marvel, in a moment of financial desperation, sold the Spider-Man film rights to Sony Pictures, long before superhero movies became big business.

Sony successfully turned Spider-Man into a blockbuster hit with Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, sparking the superhero movie trend that would lead to the rise of the MCU.

Sony’s Spider-Man agreement with Marvel included a condition requiring the studio to commence production on a dedicated Spider-Man movie every five years or so, or the film rights would return to Marvel.

Hence, a mere five years after Spider-Man 3 (2007), Sony rebooted the character with The Amazing Spider-Man (2012). The failure of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, however, lead to the Marvel-Sony deal in which Spider-Man entered the MCU, and Sony created a parallel universe.

A report from The Wrap paints a bleak picture of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, claiming that the studio sank $465 million into a series of films that just didn’t resonate with viewers.

"The biggest issue with the Sony Spider-Man spinoffs seems to be the lack of quality control,” a Sony insider told The Wrap.

”The movies just aren’t good.”

As the recent struggles of the MCU have shown, it's hard to maintain a cinematic universe over multiple years; viewers can easily lose interest, or become fatigued as layers of plot build through interconnected films and TV shows.

To the casual viewer, it was never made clear that the Sony Spider-Man Universe and the MCU were separate franchises that occasionally overlapped; at times, both studios seemed uncertain of how the two universes should collide.

Sony’s Spider-Man Universe often dropped hints that it was loosely connected to the MCU through convoluted post-credits sequences, but the connection seemed uncertain.

To add to the confusion, Marvel reintroduced many of the characters from Sony’s previous Spider-Man films to Spider-Man: No Way Home for nostalgia's sake (such as Doc Ock and Green Goblin), but these characters were not part of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe.

Only one Sony Spider-Man Universe character—Tom Hardy’s Venom—appeared in an official MCU post-credits sequence, but Marvel didn’t follow through with the connection.

It didn’t help that Sony introduced an explicit MCU connection in the post-credits scenes of Morbius, which was ruthlessly mocked by the internet, blossoming into a popular meme where refusing to watch Morbius was part of the joke.

Sony followed Morbius up with another meme hit, Madame Web, which was mocked from the very first trailer, introducing the immortal line, "He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders just before she died.”

Madame Web stars extremely obscure comic characters who have a vague connection to Spider-Man—it ends with the villain, who greatly resembles Spider-Man, defeated by a piece of product placement.

It’s a weird movie that made the internet very happy.

Sony’s universe couldn’t quite stand on its own—it latched onto Marvel, like a symbiote, but ended up muddling the multiverse, and confusing fans.

Thankfully, Sony already has an incredibly successful, well-reviewed Spider-Man franchise in the form of the animated Spider-Verse movies, which focus on Miles Morales.

The Spider-Verse is set to continue with the upcoming sequel Beyond The Spider-Verse, and the spin-off Spider-Noir.

Amusingly, Sony’s Spider-Verse movies are not part of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (a connection was implied at the end of the first Venom film, but never followed up on).

Now, Kraven the Hunter, a villain defined by his all-consuming quest to hunt Spider-Man as prey, has been introduced as an animal-loving antihero who has no connection with Spider-Man at all.

Kraven’s solo film marks the end of Sony’s strange franchise, a cinematic universe that couldn’t quite decide what it really was, what timeline it took place in, or if Spider-Man was ever going to appear.

It was all very confusing, but thankfully, it’s over.

Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, however, will return in the upcoming MCU film Spider-Man 4, which arrives on July 24, 2026.

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