The Ronin has confirmed that British cinematographer Ben Davis (The King’s Man) has joined the production team for Sony’s Kraven The Hunter, directed by J.C. Chandor (Triple Frontier) and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Tenet, Bullet Train, Avengers: Age of Ultron) playing the titular Marvel Comics character.
It’s certainly an interesting crew addition given that Ben Davis is mostly known for working on Marvel Studios films such as Avengers: Age of Ultron (also starred Taylor-Johnson), Guardians of The Galaxy, Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel, and Eternals.
The project will focus on Sergei Kravinoff aka Kraven, a Russian aristocrat turned big-game hunter that becomes a major antagonist of Marvel superhero Spider-Man as a member of The Sinister Six and half-brother of fellow villain The Chameleon.
Kraven The Hunter has a script penned by Richard Wenk (The Equalizer, The Expendables 2) with Art Marcum and Matt Holloway tackling rewrites. The duo of screenwriters aren’t strangers to studio genre projects working on Iron Man, Punisher: War Zone, Transformers: The Last Knight, Men In Black: International, and the upcoming Tom Holland video game movie Uncharted.
Could we see Kraven join the MCU like other Spidey villains?
Well, Davis’ addition isn’t the first time MCU department heads have worked on Spider-Man spinoffs. Matthew Libatique (Iron Man, Iron Man 2) did the cinematography on the first Venom and production designer Stefania Cella (Morbius) recently worked on the Disney+ series Moon Knight.
Deadline reporter Justin Kroll tweeted a list of names that Sony had considered to play Kraven (before Aaron Taylor-Johnson was hired) but they had passed. Those high-profile names were Keanu Reeves (John Wick, The Matrix), Brad Pitt (Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Fight Club, Inglorious Basterds), John David Washington (Tenet), and Adam Driver (House of Gucci, Logan Lucky, Star Wars: The Force Awakens).
Sony Pictures has already given the Spider-Man spinoff a release date of January 13, 2023.
THE RONIN 