Ryan Coogler has already admitted his original desires to include another Marvel hero in Black Panther when the project first started coming together, but it seems he also wanted to bring in another villain too. According to a chat with Yahoo Movies, Coogler originally kicked around the idea of including Spider-Man villain Kraven The Hunter in the film. But as he lays out, the strange contractual details with Marvel’s properties kept him from using the character:
“Being a Marvel fan, you want to grab all the characters. You realize there are contractual things. You don’t have that character. There was a Christopher Priest run that was pretty heavy, there’s a big scene where Panther’s fighting Kraven, Kraven the Hunter.”
“I’ve always loved Kraven the Hunter in almost every iteration. So there was a moment – ‘Can I grab Kraven?’ – and they were ‘Nah, you don’t have Kraven.’ He was one where I thought ‘Oh, man.’ But I don’t even know if he would have worked in the movie we ended up with, this was the early days.”
He also admits that he was given plenty of creative freedom with his film away from what was being done with the character as part of the larger Infinity War film. Coogler says that “It was possible, maybe if I wanted to kill T’Challa or something” but nothing else he planned for the film came into “conflict” with The Russo Brothers or Marvel’s greater plans for the Cinematic Universe.
Kraven certainly makes plenty of sense in terms of setting and the Marvel Knights run by Christopher Priest, but he also covers a lot of the same ground as Ulysses Klaw. Still, it would have been great to see that vest of Kraven’s on the big screen.
(Via Yahoo Movies)