Sony Pictures CEO Tony Vinciquerra has shared his thoughts on “Kraven the Hunter” and “Madame Web” bombing at the box office.
Vinciquerra, 70, spoke about the movies during an interview with the Los Angeles Times published Thursday, and admitted that the Aaron Taylor-Johnson-starring Marvel flick “Kraven the Hunter” is “probably the worst launch we had” in his nearly eight year tenure Sony.
“I still don’t understand, because the film is not a bad film,” he added.
After hitting theaters on Dec. 13, “Kraven” earned a measly $11 million in its first weekend and the ignominious place in Hollywood history as the lowest box open for a Sony-released Marvel movie to date.
The film, which reportedly had a budget of $110 million — now has an $18 million domestic haul and a global gross of $43 million.
The financial failure of “Kraven” stung more after “Madame Web,” starring Dakota Johnson, flopped, taking home only $100 million, and “Venom: The Last Dance” became the lowest grossing film in the franchise.
Of “Madame Web,” Vinciquerra blames film critics for its failure.
“Let’s just touch on ‘Madame Web’ for a moment,” Vinciquerra told the LA Times. “‘Madame Web’ underperformed in the theaters because the press just crucified it. It was not a bad film, and it did great on Netflix.”
“For some reason, the press decided that they didn’t want us making these films out of ‘Kraven’ and ‘Madame Web,’ and the critics just destroyed them. They also did it with ‘Venom,’ but the audience loved ‘Venom’ and made ‘Venom’ a massive hit.”
“These are not terrible films,” he continued. “They were just destroyed by the critics in the press, for some reason.”
Vinciquerra cited the lackluster critical reception of Sony’s Marvel movies as a reason why he says the studio needs to “rethink” how it proceeds with new “Spider-Man” movies it releases.
“It’s snake-bitten. If we put another one out, it’s going to get destroyed, no matter how good or bad it is,” he explained.
Despite Vinciquerra defending “Kraven” and “Madame Web” as “not terrible,” the action flicks have 16% and 11% scores on Rotten Tomatoes, respectively.
In addition to “Kraven” and “Madame Web,” Sony suffered bad reviews and bad box office receipts with another recent Marvel release, 2022’s “Morbius,” starring Jared Leto.
Sources at Sony told Variety earlier this month that “Kraven,” “Madame Web” and “Morbius” — all three Spider-Man villain spinoffs — were “creative and critical duds” — though they also insisted “Morbius” turned a profit with its $167.4 million gross. The insiders added that the studio has to be “more discerning” about making a standalone film for any other Spidey villains — if they even make more of those movies in the first place.
Despite its recent failures, Sony is hard at work with Disney’s Marvel Studios on a fourth “Spider-Man” installment starring Tom Holland.
