'Kraven the Hunter' trailer: Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars in R-rated movie

‘Kraven the Hunter’ trailer promises an R-rated, bloody romp for Aaron Taylor-Johnson

June 19, 2023 4:47 PM PT

Aaron Taylor-Johnson is on a quest to prove he’s the alpha predator in the first blood-soaked trailer for “Kraven the Hunter.”

On Monday, Sony released an official sneak peek of the film based on the Marvel Comics villain of the same name.

According to comics lore, Kraven — who made his first appearance in “The Amazing Spider-Man” comic in 1964 — is a Russian immigrant and big-game hunter seeking to defeat Spider-Man in order to show he is the world’s greatest hunter. Also known as Sergei Kravinoff, Kraven prefers to hunt using his bare hands and is a founding member of the Sinister Six supervillain group.

In the trailer, a young Kraven (Levi Miller) is shown struggling to find his true identity while under the wing of his domineering, brutal father (Russell Crowe). After surviving a vicious lion attack while out on a hunt with his family, Kraven gains superhuman strength and tracking abilities when the lion’s blood mixes with his own.

“I stared death in the face, and for the first time, I saw my true self,” Taylor-Johnson’s Kraven narrates in the trailer as scenes of him committing gruesome murders flash onscreen.

Kraven makes his purpose for hunting clear: “My father puts evil into the world. I take it out.”

Unlike the comics, this version of the master hunter uses bows and arrows to take down his prey, resulting in sanguine splatters.

The trailer also shows the return to screen of fellow Russian supervillain the Rhino (Alessandro Nivola) , who was last portrayed by Paul Giamatti in the Andrew Garfield-led “The Amazing Spider Man 2” in 2014. The film’s antagonist menacingly poses the question: “Don’t you want to know why they call me the Rhino?”

While “Kraven the Hunter” marks the debut of Taylor-Johnson in the Sony Spider-Man Universe, it‘s not the first time he has portrayed a Marvel character on screen. He previously played the lightning-fast hero Quicksilver in 2015’s “Avengers: The Age of Ultron.”

The movie is the fourth entry in Sony’s Spider-Man supervillain stories — following 2018’s “Venom,” its 2021 sequel, “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” and 2022’s “Morbius” — and the first R-rated Marvel flick from Sony.

The J.C. Chandor-directed film is currently slated to hit theaters Oct. 6. Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger and Christopher Abbott round out the cast.