About a month or so ago it was revealed that the filmmakers behind SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE were once toying with the idea of having Tobey Maguire coming on to voice the role of Peter B. Parker, thus having a much bigger connection to Spidey’s history at the movies. Though the part eventually went to Jake Johnson, co-director and co-writer Rodney Rothman revealed that there was once another chance for Maguire’s version to come into play, along with past Spider-Men Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland.
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Rothman was being interviewed on the podcast The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith (via /Film), and in the last 14 minutes or so he was asked by Goldsmith about the possibility of including other Spider-Men we’ve seen in the past – like the one currently played by Holland. Rothman then revealed there was once a seen in an early draft that had all three major cinematic Spider-Men together, but it was eventually scrapped.
“I wrote a scene that had every, that had Tom Holland and Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire in the same scene and… I don’t want to get into it but I did write that scene, but there’s a lot of anxiety, there’s a lot of anxiety around the movie generally and there was anxiety about confusing people.”
This comes off the heels of the December reveal that Maguire was once considered to come back to play his version of Spider-Man once more, who would’ve then taken on the mentorship role with young Miles Morales (Shameik Moore). Johnson was eventually given the role to possibly make the story feel more contained, but Rothman said in the same quote that now that people are familiar with the world they’ve established perhaps there could be room to venture further and include other versions audiences are familiar with.
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Rothman and Co. made the right call in not including all these past Spiders, as it would’ve no doubt made audiences confused over which version of the character they were watching and if it was the same from the movies from the past. While Maguire’s Spider-Man/Peter Parker would be at the perfect point to be in the mid-life crisis the SPIDER-VERSE Parker is in (dad bod and all), the more important thing to do was place the movie on its own two feet and not rely on other outings. After pulling in some solid box office numbers and a possible Oscar win on the way, SPIDER-VERSE 2 seems inevitable, and now that people are all-in on the concept it’s not too far-fetched to think they could bring in the actors for one, big Spidey mashup. I mean, couldn't they all just be having some shwarma together for a brief moment?
SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE is in theaters now.