Kraven the Hunter was one of Sony Pictures' biggest Marvel disasters to date. The movie flopped with critics and filmgoers, grossing significantly less than even Madame Web at the worldwide box office ($40 million less than the latter's $100 million, to be exact).
Before it became clear that fans didn't want "Sony Pictures' Universe of Marvel Characters," the plan had been to build to a Sinister Six project assembling Venom, Morbius, The Vulture, Kraven, and perhaps characters like Cassandra Webb and Rhino.
That idea has thankfully been scrapped but it seems Sony intended to tease Knull in Kraven the Hunter. Artist Jules Darriulat shared a piece of concept art from the movie showing a planet's surface littered with dead Symbiotes.
He captioned the post by saying, "Here's an environment shot done for a cancelled sequence from Kraven the Hunter. It was a lot of fun working on this sequence with the Framestore's art department team!"
It's possible this was going to be used as a post-credits scene back when Kraven the Hunter was scheduled to be released before Venom: The Last Dance. After all, teasing Knull there would have greatly increased interest in the threequel (instead, we saw most of the King in Black's scenes in trailers).
Alternatively, perhaps we'd have got another Knull tease for either Venom 4 or Spider-Man 4 before Sony pulled the plug on its largely unpopular slate of spin-offs.
Here's what filmmaker Kelly Marcel told us about plans for Knull last October:
"So Knull actually was the first character we went in to design for this movie. Before Venom-Horse...Xenophage and Knull were the first two [characters] that went into the works in terms of design. We knew we had to get Knull right. He's a massive, massive fan favourite. We wanted to stick as close to the comics as possible in terms of what he looked like."
"We knew Andy Serkis would be Knull from Venom 2. He was our director on Venom 2; Tom and I were always talking on Venom 2 about what Venom 3 was going to be and we knew we wanted to introduce Knull in the way that we have."
"At the same time, looking at Andy Serkis every day as he's directing, [we're saying] 'Well, he's the greatest. Knull is CGI mo-cap and a lot of voice acting and there's only one person for that. He's the greatest. We always knew it would be Andy. We love Andy and it felt right. We've brought most of our team along with us for all three of these movies so we really want to keep it as a family. Andy is a massive part of the Venom family."
Do you wish we'd visited this planet of dead Symbiotes in Kraven the Hunter? As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments section.
Kraven the Hunter is the action-packed, R-rated, standalone story of how one of Marvel’s most iconic villains came to be.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Kraven, a man whose complex relationship with his ruthless gangster father, Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe), starts him down a path of vengeance with brutal consequences, motivating him to become not only the greatest hunter in the world, but also one of its most feared.
The cast also includes Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott, and Russell Crowe.
Kraven the Hunter is still playing in (at least some) theaters.