At this point, we don't know all the secrets Spider-Man: No Way Home has in store, but we know a good amount of them, which includes a mashing together of multiverses to bring back characters from both Sam Raimi's Spidey series (Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin, Alfred Molina's Doctor Octopus, Thomas Haden Church's Sandman) and the Amazing Spider-Man two-piece (Jamie Foxx's Electro, Rhys Ifan's Lizard). And while there's no official word on whether former Peters Parker Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield will appear, the unofficial consensus is, basically, come onnnnnn. The point being, that's a whole lot of logistical deal-making for Marvel and Sony, and a ton of secret-keeping for No Way Home stars Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Jacob Batalon. When Collider's Steve Weintraub sat down with the trio to discuss the new MCU film, we learned that not only did they know about Marvel's multiverse plans for "at least a couple years," but it often looked like those massive plans wouldn't pan out. During those shaky times, director Jon Watts had a pretty good backup plan for his third Spider-Man movie: Kraven the Hunter.
"When I first heard about [the multiverse], I was like, 'okay cool, but that’s definitely not going to happen,'" Zendaya told Collider. Holland followed that up by noting Watts had a fully fleshed-out idea for a Kraven the Hunter story, should the sequel to Spider-Man: Far From Home need it. Here's what he said:
"For a long time, there was going to be a Kraven movie that was going to be the third movie because things weren’t working out and all sorts of different stuff. Jon pitched me this Kraven movie, which actually was really cool. I don’t want to talk about it in case that movie ends up happening down the line, but it was fun."
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First appearing in Amazing Spider-Man #15 from writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, the classic Spidey villain Kraven—real name Sergei Kravinoff—is a master tracker and big game huntsman who becomes singularly obsessed with catching his prey. The good news: The character is set to make his live-action appearance, just not (for now!) in the MCU proper. Sony announced back in May that Aaron Taylor-Johnson would step into the leopard-print furs of Kraven the Hunter in a standalone film directed by Triple Frontier helmer J.C. Chandor. That film, written by Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, and Richard Wenk, has a release date of January 13, 2023, and will join the studio's MCU-adjacent slate of Marvel movies that also include Venom and Morbius.
But Watts, it should be noted, has been champing at the bit to get Kraven into one of his movies for a while now. All the way back in 2019, way before we knew any details about No Way Home, the filmmaker had this to say to Uproxx: "I would love Kraven. It’s just the trick of how do you do Kraven in a movie?"
Spider-Man: No Way Home hits theaters on December 17th. Check out exactly what Holland, Zendaya, and Batalon had to say in the player above and look for our full interview with the cast soon.