Aaron Taylor-Johnson on Future of ‘Kraven the Hunter’: “You’re Going to Want to See Him Go On”

Aaron Taylor-Johnson is the latest to take on a Spider-Man villain in Kraven the Hunter, following in the footsteps of Venom, Morbius and Madame Web in the origin story of the world’s most feared predator.

And before the film has even been released, the movie’s team is looking ahead to the future of the character, which faces some questions after previous disappointing box office turnouts — particularly from Madame Web — and Sony’s strategy with its Marvel characters going forward.

“This first movie is for everybody — the audiences, come see it, and I think by the end of the movie you’re going to want to see him go on,” Taylor-Johnson told The Hollywood Reporter at the film’s New York premiere on Tuesday. “It’s up to you guys, it’s all over to you now.” Director J. C. Chandor echoed, “Let’s hope this one works, and then there’s a lot of places he could go.”

The filmmaker added that despite the pressures, “I treated this story exactly the way I have every other film I’ve ever made, which is you just try to make the absolute best film that you can; build the best characters, hire the best people and tell the best story. I think when people, knock on wood, when they come out and see this, they’ll realize everyone did a pretty beautiful job and I think it’s a pretty good little film.”

Taylor-Johnson stars alongside Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger and Alessandro Nivola in the project, with Russell Crowe playing the ruthless father that starts him down a path of vengeance.

“It was everything,” the star said of working with Crowe, adding, “He is a legend, I’m like in awe of him. Huge fan growing up and still am, and he is fantastic in this movie — he’s perfectly menacing, just the way you want to see Russell Crowe. He plays my father and we get these scenes head-to-head and it was a dream moment.”

The R-rated movie also features plenty of stunt work, as Taylor-Johnson reflected on “a sequence that goes underwater that I get dragged through the River Thames by a helicopter, which is mad in itself that that’s a sentence. We were doing underwater training for that, that took about a week of training in order to do stuff like that, it was kind of intense. That’s just one of many things that we do in this movie.”

Kraven the Hunter hits theaters on Friday.

Neha Joy contributed to this report.