Production for Sony’s Marvel film Kraven The Hunter has ramped up as of late with the recent castings of Russell Crowe, Fred Hechinger, Ariana DeBose, and Alessandro Nivola alongside the leading Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the titular role. In a conversation with Spider-Man star Andrew Garfield for Hero Magazine, Taylor-Johnson discussed his upcoming role of Kraven and the physical changes he is making to prepare to play the character.

“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. 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. 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 sh-t, I don’t know what it is, but I’m always drawn to the thing that might actually give me a fucking stroke!”

Clearly, the role is going to take some intense physical transformation for Taylor-Johnson, but he seems to have it well in hand, especially with his experience in action films and even as Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Since then, he has appeared in Tenet, The King’s Man, and will appear in David Leitch’s Bullet Train alongside Brad Pitt and Sandra Bullock later this year.

The film will be directed by J.C. Chandor and was written by Art Marcum & Matt Holloway, and Richard Wenk. Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach will produce.

Kraven The Hunter is currently in pre-production and is set to release on January 13, 2023.