‘Kraven the Hunter’ breaks Sony and Marvel’s most embarrassing box office record with ease

Kraven the Hunter’s first appearance on the big screen may have been his first and final hunt, as the character’s new titular film hasn’t just bombed… it has been a historical failure blowing all of the other previous Marvel misfires out of the water.

Sony’s latest Marvel film Kraven the Hunter was released in theaters around the United States on Dec. 12, 2024, kicking off a rough weekend for everyone involved. The release of this film was flanked by negative reviews and audience reactions which look to have factored greatly into its box office take. While there have been a ton of major box office success stories in recent weeks, namely Wicked and Moana 2, Kraven the Hunter could not be more of the opposite. During its opening three days, Kraven the Hunter made an abysmal $11 million domestically according to Deadline.

For perspective, even Morbius and Madame Web — which are both unanimously seen as some of the worst Marvel movies ever made — managed to take more in their respective opening days. Morbius opened with $39 million despite being bad, and Madame Web still scraped together $15 million.

The only Marvel movie to debut worse than Kraven the Hunter was Fox’s The New Mutants, however, that arrived in theaters during the start of the pandemic in August of 2020 and still managed to make $7 million domestically during its opening weekend.

Fortunately, the international box office has helped to soften the blow for Sony with Kraven’s big screen debut making an extra $15 million abroad. Still, $26 million is not a great start for a movie that reportedly costs more than $110 million to make. Safe to say Sony won’t be running out to give this one a sequel.

You can make your own mind up on exactly why Kraven the Hunter has bombed this hard, but there’s several factors that look to have contributed. The biggest of these is likely the online response to early screenings of the movie, which painted the picture of another massive misfire for Sony’s Marvel franchise — more than likely souring the excitement for would-be moviegoers to head out and see the film. However, that’s not the only reason for this outcome.

Kraven the Hunter’s promotion only seemed to ramp up in the weeks prior to its release. In fact, for a long time before December, there was no real push to promote this movie, which led to many fans forgetting that it was happening at all. Given what has transpired, perhaps the lack of advertising was an effort to reduce costs, but we’ll probably never know.

While it might have secured the record for the worst opening weekend of any Sony Marvel project, according to some fans, Kraven the Hunter is not the worst movie in the franchise. That honor still goes to Madame Web, which has a terrible 11 percent critic score on Rotten Tomatoes and only a slightly better 55 percent audience score.

Perhaps audiences will miss Kraven more when he’s gone, and it seems that time is coming sooner than many expected. If you’re eager to see just how bad this movie really is, then you can still head out and see Kraven the Hunter in cinemas around the globe right now. However, we expect that for many, this is one to wait for on streaming.