Sergei Kravenoff, also known as Kraven the Hunter, was the main antagonist of the unpublished 1974 film Spider-Man Verses Kraven the Hunter. He would have been a supervillain hunter that would have attempted to kill Spider-Man.
He was portrayed by an unknown actor.
History[]
The film was directed, written, and produced by indie filmmaker Bruce Cardozo. Production started around fall of 1972, and loosely adapted issue #15 from The Amazing Spider-Man comic book series, where Spider-Man is fought by Kraven the Hunter, a big game hunter that views Spider-Man as a challenge and agrees to hunt him. Bruce managed to get approval from Spider-Man co-creator, the late Stan Lee, to make the film, and they shot the film to be the first live-action film based on the character of Spider-Man. The film was discussed in a 1975 issue of Marvel's self-produced fan magazine FOOM.
However, Bruce was unable to get proper licensing for the characters. Additionally, although he expressed satisfaction with individual scenes and clips, Stan Lee was dissatisfied with the final project and wished not to endorse it. The film was never released, and the only copy belonged to Bruce.
After the success of the 2002 Spider-Man film directed by Sam Raimi, Bruce began showing the film at conventions and to guests at his home in Los Angeles, California. However, the copy was later destroyed due to an unknown incident. Bruce passed away from blood cancer in 2016, making Spider-Man Verses Kraven the Hunter a piece of lost media.
Biography[]
The plot of the film was adapted from issue #15 of The Amazing Spider-Man comic book series. After defeating a series of robbers, one of them escapers and calls in Kraven to kill Spider-Man. In the comic, this was the supervillain Chameleon in disguise, though this plot point was allegedly adapted out in the film. Kraven arrives in America and tracks down Spider-Man, who is forced to fight the supervillain while avoiding the potent poisons the hunter uses to incapacitate his prey.