"Kraven the Hunter" has the worst opening in history. Sony Pictures CEO: I can't understand it

Tony Vinciquerra, CEO of Sony Pictures, is set to step down on January 2, 2025. In his final days before his departure, he spoke with The Times, reflecting on his more than seven-year tenure at the company and discussing some of the company’s recent films.

He said that the films released during his tenure had achieved "very good results" overall, but that the recent release of "Kraven the Hunter" - the last film he was responsible for releasing - was probably the company's "worst release in seven years." He said he "still can't understand" why the film performed so poorly, and insisted that "it's not a bad movie."

The interviewer also mentioned another poorly reviewed film from earlier this year, Spider-Man, and Vinciquerra also insisted that even though "the media panned it harshly," "it's not a bad movie" and "did well on Netflix." He blamed the media and critics for the failure of these films, including Venom, because "the audience loved Venom and made Venom explode," saying that "they are not bad movies... they were just ruined by the critics in the media for some reason."

However, in reality, no one likes these movies, including all Spider-Man spin-offs, such as the previous Morbius and the recently released Venom 3. Currently on Metacritic, Kraven the Hunter has an average media score of 35/100 and an average audience score of 4.7/10; Mrs. Spider has an average media score of 26 and an average audience score of 2.8; Venom 3 has an average media score of 41 and an average audience score of 5.9; Morbius has an average media score of 35 and an average audience score of 6.0 (many of them are just for memes, so bad that they even have loyal fans).

Overall, Vinciquerra seems to be ready to blame all the failures before leaving. When discussing anime-related businesses, he said that even though Crunchyroll, the European and American anime subscription service acquired by the company, has been criticized by many anime fans and reported to be losing money, Vinciquerra still insisted that this is because other streaming services are now also involved in anime, which has increased Sony's operating costs.

Netflix has launched such successful works as "Cyberpunk: Edgewalker" and "League of Legends: Battle of Two Towers", but Crunchyroll has not yet launched any successful original works. Sony also acquired FUNIMATION, the only other regular animation network service in Europe and the United States, and merged the two businesses. Later, it closed the FUNIMATION service, causing all users who had previously purchased animations separately to lose the works they purchased. In addition, after moving from the old service to the new service, many users' subscription fees became more expensive - Crunchyroll also raised prices several times in a short period of time. However, due to Sony's "monopoly", users either choose to continue subscribing or go back to watching pirated copies. There are also reports that Japanese animation companies are also very dissatisfied with the way Crunchyroll uses the animation licenses it has obtained.

There was also an English voice actor whose fan gifts were divided up by Crunchyroll employees themselves, and the actor only found out about this after receiving contact from fans.