Kraven the Hunterbombing seemed like it could be the nail in the coffin for the Sony Spider-Man Universe (that doesn’t have Spider-Man). Madame Web opened the year with disappointing totals. Then Venom: The Last Dance also performed poorly relative to the previous Venom films. The writing seemed to be on the wall.
But the CEO of Sony Pictures, Tony Vinciquerra, begs to disagree.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Vinciquerra said:
Vinciquerra: We’ve had mostly very, very good results. Unfortunately, [
Kraven the Hunter
] that we launched last weekend…is probably the worst launch we had…which I still don’t understand, because the film is not a bad film….LAT: Going back to Kraven the Hunter, and Sony had Madame Web earlier this year, which also underperformed…
Vinciquerra: Let’s just touch on Madame Web for a moment. 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. They were just destroyed by the critics in the press, for some reason.
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Our Take On Vinciquerra’s Statements
On the one hand, I wouldn’t expect Vinciquerra to say something like “Yeah, we really made some bad movies, didn’t we?” Anyone who watches sports is familiar with the post-game interview where the team leader says, “Everyone fought hard today. It just didn’t work out for us this time. This is a good team, and we’ll do better next time.”
On the other hand, I can’t get over the line “they were just destroyed by the critics in the press, for some reason.” Call me old fashioned, but I would hope the head of a film studio would have more definitive answers to what went wrong than “for some reason.” Every critic who eviscerated Morbius, Venom, Madame Web, and Kraven the Hunter provided ample reasons. It’s not like critics simply write “Bad!” and don’t elaborate.
Maybe the reason the Sony Spider-Man movies haven’t been good is because the CEO of Sony Pictures has a really really really really low floor for what he considers “not a bad film”. If anyone hasn’t told him, I’ll do it: they were bad films.
LAT: Do you think that the Spider-Man universe strategy needs to be rethought?
Vinciquerra: I do think we need to rethink it, just because it’s snake-bitten. If we put another one out, it’s going to get destroyed, no matter how good or bad it is.
While I could continue to yell about Vinciquerra’s answers, he steps down on January 2nd, 2025. The COO of Sony Pictures, Ravi Ahuja, will take over. Maybe Ahuja will approach quality control of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe in a different, better way than his predecessor. One can only hope.
