Connecting Imaginary Dots: Evidence for Kraven as the Villain in ‘Spider-Man 3’

If you’ve never read an installment of Connecting Imaginary Dots, allow me to explain the idea. Connecting Imaginary Dots was the title I came up with for my speculation pieces when I was writing at MCU Exchange. These types of pieces basically allow me to unload a bunch of junk that’s circulating in my brain in a way that should never be confused for things I actually expect to happen. I basically take a bunch of facts that are almost always entirely unrelated and do my best to connect the dots with by stretching my imagination. In the past these types of pieces have resulted in me theorizing that the Spider-Man sequel which became Far From Home might end up being a team-up outing of Spidey and Hulk in the Savage Land;however, I also wrote one theorizing that Sterling K. Brown would be playing the father of Erik Killmonger in Black Panther LOOOOOONG before anyone else was considering it and one in which I theorized that Annette Bening was actually Mar-Vell when everyone else still thought Jude Law was playing the character. The bottom line is this: these are fun spec pieces that allow me to just be a fan. With that out of the way…

Plenty of people have written up plenty of spec pieces on how and why Kraven is the perfect villain to take on the Web Slinger in the upcoming MCU Spidey film. I’m not here to rehash all that because, for the most part, I agree. I’m here to discuss one SMALL piece of information that may have, to this point, have been overlooked.

The recent report from The Illuminerdi indicated that Sony’s plans for a Kraven solo film revealed that Sony was reimagining the character as a “Bourne-like bounty hunter.” That’s a great take. Sounds tough. But one detail that stands out to me is that as of last Spring Sony had hoped to get production on Kraven rolling no later than the 2nd quarter of this year. That means that their original plans were to begin filming by June…which as of today is just 4 months away. And Sony REALLY wanted to get this film going, but there’s no record anywhere of it being close to filming. So unless Sony is going all JJ Abrams on this production and hiding everything, Kraven isn’t filming any time soon.

It’s the fact that Kraven-a film Sony was so eager to get moving at one point that they had started trying to line up some big name directors (Antoine Fuqua comes to mind)-is NOT filming in June which I find interesting. I find it even more interesting because in addition to Kraven not filming this summer, the third Spider-Man film is.

So, connecting the dots here, I think it’s highly likely that Sony’s plans for a Kraven solo were derailed when they went back to the bargaining table with Disney, at which point the Hunter became the villain of Spidey 3. To me, the nearly year-long lack of any movement on Kraven is as good of an indicator as any of what we can expect to see when Spidey 3 hits theaters in 2021.

Now, as to what role he’ll play and if he’ll be the only villain in the film, I’d say that’s a discussion for another time…