The hunt is about to begin.

It looks like Sony is inching closer and closer to getting their Kraven the Hunter movie off the ground. The character, spun out of the pages of Marvel Comics, is a longtime adversary of Spider-Man, although his backstory and motives make him a bit more complex than your average power-mad supervillain. Already Aaron Taylor-Johnson has been cast as Kraven, while J.C. Chandor is attached to direct the project.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, another big name talent has been added to the cast, with Russell Crowe accepting an undisclosed role in the film. All THR would say about who he’s playing is that while the story of the film is unknown “many of the main characters are said to be Kraven’s family members.”

I know less about this specific project than THR does, but I’ve read about as many Spider-Man comics as any person ever should, so I can tell you that Kraven does canonically have a large family, including several children who’ve become super-villains in their own right. One, Alyosha Kravinoff, even adopted the Kraven the Hunter identity for a while. So it seems possible that Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who’s pretty young looking to play the classical version of Kraven the Hunter, could be playing Alyosha or a variation of a younger Kraven, who must grapple with the legacy of his father, who could be played by Crowe. In his Gladiator prime, Crowe would have made a perfect Kraven the Hunter. He makes sense as Kraven’s dad. But that’s all just a guess.

Regardless, this project will be a pretty big test for Sony and its Spider-Man spinoff universe of movies. Venom is a widely known character; he’d appeared in a bunch of cartoons, and in movie theaters in Spider-Man 3, before he ever got his own movie. He had the pre-established name recognition to headline his own franchise. Does Kraven? I really don’t know. (We’re also still waiting to find out if Morbius has enough name recognition, but that film has already been delayed so many times it doesn’t look good.)

Kraven the Hunter is scheduled to open in theaters on January 13, 2023.

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