Exit interviews always suck, but that must go double for departing Sony Pictures CEO Tony Vinciquerra who had to know he would face a bunch of questions about his failure to successfully launch a Spider-Man cinematic universe without any Spider-Man in it. Speaking with the Los Angeles Times, Viniquerra began with the apparent final Marvel movie under his tenure: Kraven the Hunter.
So, throughout this portion of the interview which looks back at the ups and downs of his 7 1/2 years running Sony, Viniquerra refuses to eat any blame. In regards to Kraven, he said “probably the worst launch we had in the 7 1/2 years [I’ve been at Sony], so that didn’t work out very well, which I still don’t understand, because the film is not a bad film.”
Kraven the Hunter, which starred Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Russell Crowe, and Ariana DeBose, opened just two weeks ago (!!!) with a woeful $11M opening weekend. It currently has $43M worldwide, and a 16% critic score at Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences also did not love it, as the Popcornmeter is only at 73%.
For the record, I sort of agree with Viniquerra that it’s not a bad film. I was entertained by the action, which was impressive, and Taylor-Johnson’s performance. I also hesitate to label it as “good”, though.
Viniquerra pressed on and threw Madame Web into the mix, too, claiming that the media is responsible that film’s dismal failure.
“Let’s just touch on Madame Web for a moment,” he said. “Madame Web underperformed in the theaters because the press just crucified it. It was not a bad film, and it did great on Netflix.”
The press blaming rolled on…“For some reason, the press decided that they didn’t want us making these films out of Kraven and Madame Web, and the critics just destroyed them. They also did it with Venom, but the audience loved Venom and made Venom a massive hit. These are not terrible films. They were just destroyed by the critics in the press, for some reason.”
Okay, so Madame Web is not a good film. It’s in fact a bad film and there’s a reason critics hold it at 11% and audiences, who are nearly always more generous, give it just 55%. As for Venom, he fails to admit that it’s been diminishing returns with each sequel both critically and at the box office. Venom: The Last Dance, released in October, is the lowest-grossing of the trilogy with $475M.
It also speaks volumes that Viniquerra didn’t even bother to mention Morbius. He probably forgot about it like most people have tried hard to do. Or he realized what a losing battle that one would be.
Suffice it to say, the media didn’t ruin these movies. Sony got off to a solid start with Venom and they should’ve just stuck with that for a while, earning audience trust along the way before expanding the cinematic universe. But they, in particular Viniquerra, got ahead of themselves.
Fortunately for Viniquerra, he’s leaving so he doesn’t have to deal with this stuff anymore. And Sony still has their partnership with Marvel, which will continue with Tom Holland in Spider-Man 4 on July 24th 2026.
