If you’ve kept up with all the year’s big releases, this one likely tops your “worst” list. But Sony Pictures CEO could not fathom why — until users on X spelled it out for him.
As his seven-year tenure comes to an end coming January, Sony Pictures CEO Tony Vinciquerra spoke to the Los Angeles Times reflecting on the studio’s performance this year. In retrospection, most Sony comic book movies fairly disappointed fans — Madame Web, Venom: The Last Dance, Kraven the Hunter — you name it. But as Vinciquerra accepted that these features catastrophically underperformed in the theaters, he’s still not ready to call them “bad films.”
Taking specifically about Kraven the Hunter (yes, the movie nobody asked for), Vinciquerra revealed that it was “the worst launch” the studio had in seven and a half years. However, he added that he still doesn’t understand why that happened, because the film is “not a bad film,” in his eyes. Um, did you take the time to read the film’s reviews, Vinciquerra? Kraven the Hunter hangs with a mere 14% Rotten Tomatoes score and a mediocre 5.4/10 IMDb rating. In our words, it was “an offensively fangless film.“
But since the studio decided to be comfortably ignorant of all the critic reviews, users on X took it upon themselves to explain to Vinciquerra why Kraven the Hunter didn’t work. While most users reiterated that nobody asked for the film to be made in the first place, some wrote elaborate notes in hopes that Sony would learn something for its future projects.
One user excellently summed it up:
“Filmmakers need to rid themselves of the attitude that ‘it’s a Marvel movie, we don’t have to make it good, it’ll make money regardless,’ when that’s clearly not the case. They should invest in the art of storytelling instead of milking the cash cow dry.”
But Kraven the Hunter did not, in fact, make any money despite being a Marvel film. The movie made a pitiful $11 million when it debuted in theaters on Dec. 13 — which is the lowest opening total for a Marvel film produced by Sony to date. While the film has made $43 million worldwide, its current domestic box office total is only $18 million. And what was the budget? $110 –130 million.
So, the storytelling, the CGI, the action sequences — everything in Kraven the Hunter was clearly a mess for it to fail this miserably. But another user pointed out the fatal flaw of how it was “a movie about a Spider-Man villain with no Spider-Man” in it. At this point, Sony’s Spider-Man Universe has become a rather ironic franchise, defined by the absence of its titular hero. Now how does that work, Vinciquerra?
One user also pointed out the inherent awareness in Vinciquerra’s comments — “rather than saying it is a good film, he says it is not a bad film.” So, the studio is at least half aware that they didn’t do their best job. But then why did they release it? In a rather brutal reply, another user wrote, “I would love to try whatever this dude is on because being so idiotically delusional seems like it must be bliss.” But this bliss is only taking the studio to its bottom. However, there might be some hope for the studio now that Vinciquerra will hand control of the CEO position to current Sony Pictures Chief Operating Officer Ravi Ahuja in a planned succession that was signaled for months. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.
Published: Dec 27, 2024 10:57 am