Sony Pictures Boss Blames Critics for Spider-Man Spin-Off Failures

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times looking back at his seven years leading Sony Pictures, departing CEO Tony Vinciquerra spoke about the studio’s successes during his tenure—as well as its disappointments. That includes the final film to launch while he’s still the boss: Kraven the Hunter.

The Spider-Man villain spin-off starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson was “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,” he said.

In a follow-up question, Vinciquerra was asked more about Kraven—as well as another notorious, Spidey-adjacent 2024 release: Madame Web.

“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.”

He continued, leaning into blaming the press for Madame Web‘s failure and others. “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.”

(Morbius, released in 2022, did not get a mention.)

On Rotten Tomatoes, Kraven the Hunter has a 15% “Tomatometer” rating from critics; movie fans gave it a 73% on the “Popcornmeter” scale. Madame Web‘s rankings are worse (11% from critics; 55% from fans); while the most recent Venom film, Venom: The Last Dance, had the most agreement between critics and audiences (41% vs 81%).

Still, just because fans who vote on Rotten Tomatoes might have positive feelings, that doesn’t necessarily translate to box office gold. Most recently, Kraven the Hunter, as Vinciquerra himself admitted, did not leave much of a mark at the box office.

The outgoing CEO may not have to worry about it much longer, but he’s definitely aware that the whole “Spider-Man spin-off” strategy, which Sony embraced so enthusiastically at the beginning, needs to be re-examined going forward. “I do think we need to rethink it, just because it’s snake-bitten,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “If we put another one out, it’s going to get destroyed, no matter how good or bad it is.”

Spider-Man 4, at least, is on the horizon: Tom Holland returns as the web-slinger in a Dustin Daniel Cretton-directed film arriving July 24, 2026.

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