Aaron Taylor-Johnson has finally opened up on his casting in Sony’s Kraven The Hunter, where he will taking on the role of the eponymous character. In an interview that he shared with The Amazing Spider-Man actor Andrew Garfield for Hero Magazine, Taylor-Johnson revealed that he is now training for the role near the production office for the film, just outside of London.

The actor, who’s currently staying with the film’s director J.C. Chandor, said:

I’m good! I’m in England, I’m not in London but just outside, close to the production office [for Kraven the Hunter]. I’m staying here because I’ve got a bunch of stunt training to do for this movie, so the director and I are bunking up for the next couple of weeks.

The character, who is focuses on his physical attributes and has massive strength and combat skills, will definitely require some aggressive training for Aaron to do justice to the character. His comic-book background, which depicts him as the “greatest hunter” also infers he’s agile and fast, thus, putting additional pressure on Taylor-Johnson to look the part per his best. Speaking of his take on his physical appearance and its training, he added:

You do come at it from another angle, which is back-to-front for me. It’s like you’re coming at it from the physical aspect, because that’s what you can see from a comic book. You go, 'Oh, he looks like that, so I have to look like that.' You see that, and then you start to backtrack and dig deeper, and go, 'This is where he originates from, then he has this relationship and that relationship…' You just hope that you’re going to portray something that you can bring to life.

Taylor-Johnson Speaks on Stepping Into Fan-favorite Role

Garfield further asked the actor how he felt stepping in to portray a character concerning whom fans have so many pre-conceptions, reservations, and opinions. To that, he simply replied:

It comes with its challenges. As you know!

Of course, no one can understand it better than Garfield, who was tasked with taking on the most beloved fan-favorite comic-book character, Spider-Man, in Marc Webb’s reboot of the franchise. After the lukewarm reception of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Garfield’s planned franchise was scrapped, and Tom Holland became the MCU iteration of the character. After his appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home, fans are triggering campaigns to revitalize the scrapped plans for The Amazing Spider-Man franchise.

Regarding the pressure that this role creates due to fan’s preset interpretations about Kraven and his comic-book lore, Taylor-Johnson also said:

There is, again, room for an interpretation, and you want to be able to bring something and let it pop off the page. It’s another new challenge, we talk about putting yourself under pressure all the time. I don’t step away from controversial s***, I don’t know what it is, but I’m always drawn to the thing that might actually give me a f****** stroke!

Aaron Taylor-Johnson indeed is aware of the controversial statements that can follow if anything goes south with the movie. However, he’s rigorously working on perfecting himself, and as fans, we can’t wait for him to essay that role in the forthcoming film.

Kraven The Hunter Against Spider-Man?

It was ironic that Aaron Taylor-Johnson shared the interview with Andrew Garfield, who has played Kraven's nemesis in his own film series. Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Spider-Man: Far From Home have already established a connection between the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, as well as a further connection to previous Spider-Man films. So, it’s already speculated that Kraven will eventually face Tom Holland’s (or maybe Garfield or Maguire) Spider-Man at some point in the future.

In fact, at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home, when a bunch of characters from the multiverse start to appear uncontrollably from branches of time, a shadow seemingly looked like Kraven, hinting at the future appearance of the character in the adjunct multiversal franchise.

Kraven The Hunter will release on January 13, 2023, directed by J.C. Chandor and written by Richard Wenk. Besides Aaron Taylor-Johnson, the film will star Fred Hechinger as The Chameleon, and Ariana DeBose as Calypso, along with Russell Crowe and Alessandro Nivola in undisclosed roles.