After a series of scene-stealing supporting roles in recent action movies like Bullet Train, Tenet and The King’s Man, Aaron Taylor-Johnson is about to take center stage as a leading man. His is one of the more frequently mentioned names that keeps getting mentioned in the ongoing discussion around which actor should take over from Daniel Craig as James Bond in the 007 franchise—but in the meantime, the British actor is going to be busy playing Marvel Comics character Kraven the Hunter in his own movie.
This won’t be Taylor-Johnson’s first foray into superhero cinema. His international breakout role was as the titular DIY wannabe hero in the ultra-violent comedy Kick-Ass and its sequel, and he played the MCU’s Pietro Maximoff, a.k.a. Quicksilver, in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
However, Kraven the Hunter doesn’t take place in the main continuity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but rather a separate series of films which exist primarily for reasons of character copyright. Kraven the Hunter will follow Venom, Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Morbius in Columbia Pictures and Sony Entertainment’s sequence of movies based on Spider-Man villains.
In his comic book origin story, Kraven starts out as Sergei Kravinoff, the world’s greatest big game hunter who comes to think of Spider-Man as his ultimate quarry. However, in this new movie, Taylor-Johnson has said that Kraven’s character has been reinterpreted to be more of “an animal lover and a protector of the natural world.”
One aspect of Kraven that has definitely made it into the movie is his physically formidable bearing: in the comics, he is swole as hell, and Taylor-Johnson has been putting in the work to build that muscular physique—which he just showed off in a new ad campaign for Calvin Klein, which sees him strip to the waist.
Somewhat predictably, Twitter’s response to the new spot was thirsty as hell. Looks like people will be seated and cravin’ Kraven by the time that movie is released later this year.
Philip Ellis is a freelance writer and journalist from the United Kingdom covering pop culture, relationships and LGBTQ+ issues. His work has appeared in GQ, Teen Vogue, Man Repeller and MTV.
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