Sony’s Spidey supervillains universe will be adding a new member to its ranks in October, the company revealed during CinemaCon. Kraven the Hunter is set to release later this year, and new footage from the film shows Alessandro Nivola as the menacing Rhino, a lesser-known Spider-Man foe who fans might remember from The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
Nivola is a 50-year-old American actor from Boston better known for his work in 2021’s The Many Saints of Newark, 2013’s American Hustle, and 2017’s Disobedience for which he won a British Independent Film Award. Recently, he played Detective Conley in Boston Strangler alongside Keira Knightley.
In the comics, Rhino is a Russian Mafia boss named Aleksei Sytsevich who undergoes chemical and radioactive procedures that give him super strength and a rhinoceros exterior. He is eventually tapped by Kraven to form an alliance to take down Spider-Man, together with Lizard and Raniero Drago, but in the Sony film, he has been confirmed to be the main villain.
In the prelude to the Hunted arc of The Amazing Spider-Man‘s issue 16, released in 2019, Rhino becomes one of the members of the animal-themed squad Savage Six, who are apprehended and put together by Kraven the Hunter. On screen, Paul Giamatti played a version of the character in the aforementioned The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
Kraven the Hunter, which has been described as violent and bloody and has been rated R, also stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the lead antihero, Oscar-winning actress Ariana DeBose as his on-and-off lover Calypso, and Russell Crowe as his dad Nikolai Kravinoff.
Published: Apr 25, 2023 10:32 am