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Russell Crowe In Kraven The Hunter Movie With Aaron Taylor-Johnson

BY Keilin Huang February 11, 2022

The Sony Marvel universe just got more exciting! Last year, we learned that Aaron Taylor-Johnson was cast as Kraven the Hunter in a movie focusing on the Spider-Man foe. Taylor-Johnson already had his brush with superhero fame as Quicksilver in The Avenger: Age of Ultron, but this new Kraven the Hunter movie will put him front and center. While we don’t know what other characters will appear or what the plotline will be, we learned that there’s a new casting announcement: Russell Crowe in Kraven the Hunter movie!

What Do We Know About Russell Crowe Being Cast in the Kraven The Hunter Movie?

russell crowe in kraven the hunter Image via Paramount Pictures

We don’t know Crowe’s role in the movie, but rumors are swirling that all of the main characters are going to be members of Kraven’s family. Sergei Kravinoff, the alias for Kraven the Hunter, is a Soviet immigrant who escaped with his family to the United States in 1917 after the Russian nobility was destroyed by the Revolution. He’s a maniacal big game hunter and wants everyone to know that he’s the greatest hunter in the world. He takes a special jungle juice potion that gives him superhuman abilities and he decides to hunt Spider-Man because he deems him the most worthy opponent for his hunting skills. Kraven the Hunter was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, and first appeared in the August 1964 The Amazing Spider-Man issue #15. He’s one of Spider-Man’s longest standing enemies and is a founding member of the Sinister Six.

I haven’t found a lot of information on Kraven’s family, although he does have a half brother who goes by the name Chameleon. He’s had several children who follow in his footsteps, but given that Crowe is quite a bit older than Taylor-Johnson, I’m thinking the Gladiator star is possibly Kraven’s father or uncle. The actor is no stranger to superheroes. He previously played Jor-El, father to Superman, in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, and he’s going to play Zeus in Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder. Crowe shared his enthusiasm for superheroes and the different worlds they can introduce when Collider interviewed him about Man of Steel. He said:

“I’m really looking foward to seeing it, it’s a massive undertaking. It takes you on the ground to Krypton, it takes you to a planet where the sun is four times larger than ours and you get to experience that stuff and if you’ve seen the trailers you realize that this Superman is not just floating through the air held up by a wire, this Superman is super sonic. I’m really looking forward to the way that people will respond to it.”

Hopefully being a part of the Kraven the Hunter movie will be just as exciting! J.C. Chandor (A Most Violent Year) is directing the film from a screenplay by Art Marcum & Matt Holloway and Richard Wenk. Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach are producing. This Kraven the Hunter movie is just one of many that are part of the Sony Marvel movies that have been contracted between the two studios. Sony currently controls the film rights to Spider-Man and other related characters, which is why the Spider-Man movies haven’t been on Disney+. Spider-Man: No Way Home smashed records across the globe and Venom and Venom: Let There Be Carnage were both well received at the box office. Sony and Marvel are currently amping up for the release of Morbius, which will come out in January of next year, and there’s also a Madame Web movie in the works that will star Dakota Johnson.