Kraven the Hunter has been a mainstay of Spider-Man’s “rogues gallery” for more than six decades — but you’ve never seen him like this. In J.C. Chandor’s 2024 film Kraven the Hunter, the Russian big-game hunter of comic book fame is reinvented as a vigilante conservationist with a taste for vengeance. Played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass, Tenet), this time Kraven is on the hunt, piecing together a vast global conspiracy — and you’re invited along for the ride.
The latest entry in Sony’s Spider-Man universe follows last year’s Madame Web and Venom: The Last Dance, all of which take the world of New York’s most beloved web-slinging superhero and spin it into a whole new multiverse of possibilities.
Here’s everything you need to know about Kraven the Hunter now that the film has prowled onto Netflix in the US.
The cast of Kraven the Hunter includes:
Kraven the Hunter kicks off in media res, with Sergei Kravinoff (Taylor-Johnson) infiltrating a Russian prison to execute an arms trafficker. We soon flash back to the ruthless hunter’s childhood in the African savanna, where he and his brother Dmitri are being groomed by their father Nikolai (Crowe) to inherit a vast criminal empire. When a lion attacks them, Sergei protects his brother from the beast, and Nikolai encourages Sergei to kill it. The young man refuses, and is left on the verge of death after being savaged by the beast. But wait! Young Calypso Ezili is in the same area visiting her grandmother, who coincidentally has just given her a mystical voodoo serum! She gives it to Sergei, who quickly recovers from his injuries — and develops a set of animalistic abilities. When his father brings home the head of the lion that attacked them, Sergei is furious, and abandons the family to live on his own in a Russian nature preserve — where he plots to protect creatures everywhere.
Back in the present, Sergei is forced to reunite with his father when grown-up Dmitri (Hechinger) is kidnapped and held for ransom. Nikolai refuses to pay, and Sergei heads off to enlist the help of Calypso (DeBose), now a lawyer. But trouble follows in the shape of five slowly walking men in suits, who Calypso insists do not look like they belong at her law firm. Soon Sergei and Calypso are on the run, trying to save Dmitri from the clutches of the ruthless Rhino (Nivola) and his enigmatic henchman, the Foreigner (Abbott). It will take all of Sergei’s animal-related skills to save his brother — and to take on the mantle (read: big furry coat) of Kraven the Hunter.
Both Kraven and his brother Dmitri (who will eventually be known as the Chameleon) were created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko during the original run of Marvel’s flagship The Amazing Spider-Man comic series. Chameleon first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #1 in March 1963, with Kraven joining him to take down the wall-crawler in The Amazing Spider-Man #15 in August 1964. The pair weren’t revealed to be half-brothers until J. M. DeMatteis and Mike Zeck’s iconic “Kraven’s Last Hunt” storyline in 1987.
On the cinematic side, Kraven the Hunter is set in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe of Marvel characters, which kicked off with Venom in 2018. While the films are not directly connected to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man trilogy (set in Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe), they do share the same larger multiverse, as seen in 2023’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (which is also streaming now).
