'Kraven the Hunter' tells villain's origin story with gangsters and gore

"Kraven The Hunter" will not be your typical Marvel Comics adaptation, with an R rating that allowed filmmakers to include more gore and construct it like a gangster film, its director says.

British actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays the lead role in the origin story, which examines how Kraven's difficult relationship with his gangster father, Nikolai Kravinoff, played by Oscar-winner Russell Crowe, sets him on a dangerous path to becoming one of the world's most feared hunters.

“We've structured it as a gangster film... but it is also... using this canon of Marvel characters that brings... another level of storytelling to it,” director J.C. Chandor told Reuters.

“The superhero genre is structured around violence, and the R rating allowed us to be a little bit more honest about that violence. So in this film, you're going to see some blood. It's a little stylized but also more realistic, quite frankly."

Taylor-Johnson trained to put on size to play the bulky Kraven, whose first lines in the movie are in Russian.

“We were taking that Marvel comic book character but taking him to a world that felt grounded in reality and... focusing in on... his back story," he told Reuters.

“I do believe you feel empathetic towards him, and yet he is killing (umpteen) different people... My character wants to be nothing like his father and ultimately becomes far worse.”

British media cited the 34-year-old as a potential contender to play suave spy James Bond.

Asked what it was like to play a villain, he said: "It's interesting when it comes with multiple layers... There's a darkness that he has to try and harbor with and come to terms with."

The film stars Ariana DeBose and Fred Hechinger and begins its global cinema roll-out on Wednesday.