Kraven the Hunter Trailer Shows R-Rated Take on Latest Spider-Man Villain Spin-Off: Watch

After the meme-able disaster of Morbius, Sony is back to try again with another unestablished Spider-Man villain solo movie. This time, they’re taking a decidedly R-rated approach, as seen in the first trailer for Kraven the Hunter.

The film stars a jacked Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Sergei Kravinoff, aka Kraven, the son of a megalomaniacal crime lord and hunter (Russell Crowe). On a safari to hunt lions, Sergei’s dad leaves him for dead after showing weakness in front of the great cat. In a bit of comic-inaccurate-but-hey-we-gotta-get-him-powers-somehow sci-fi, it seems Sergei’s blood gets mixed with that of a lion, granting him apex predator abilities and apparently a direct line of communication to animals.

He grows up and decides to use his vicious powers to counteract his father’s criminal enterprises; “My father puts evil into the world; I take it out,” he tells Ariana DeBose’s character, reportedly the voodoo priestess Calypso. As the red band trailer shows, Kraven the Hunter is willing to get up close and violently personal with his enemies, including biting one guy’s nose right off his face. But as the tagline hints, Kraven may think of himself as the hero, but is he making himself into the villain?

(To be clear, Kraven is unequivocally a villain in the Spider-Man comics, but as this is Sony’s Universe of Marvel Characters and not the MCU proper, the line is a bit more blurred.)

Kraven the Hunter also stars Fred Hechinger as Kraven’s half-brother, Dmitri Smerdyakov, aka master of disguise the Chameleon; Christopher Abbott as the yet-unrevealed primary villain; and Alessandro Nivola as the classic Spidey advisory Rhino, who’s transformation is teased at the trailer’s end. J. C. Chandor (A Most Violent Year) directed from a script credited to Art Marcum and Matt Holloway (Iron Man, Uncharted) and Richard Wenk (The Equalizer series).

Watch the preview below, and get ready for when Kraven the Hunter prowls into theaters on October 6th. Also peep the first poster for the film, showing Taylor-Johnson in a classic Kraven pose upon his throne.