Preface

• Alright, I really need to talk about this news!
  • Cuz (a) it’s driving me crazy and (2) I’m a Spider-Man fan who hasn’t talked about this news almost at all.
• During the Sony hacks, the biggest news to come out of it was that discussions had happened between Sony and Marvel about the Spider-Man character, and him possibly being sold back to Marvel.
  • In later emails though, it appeared that these discussions fell through.
• Then in mid to late December, right as everyone was getting off from school and work for a vacation, another news story came up that Spider-Man was definitely going back to Marvel and appearing in Civil War, AND that Anthony and Joe Russo were signed onto directing a new Spider-Man trilogy at Marvel starting in 2017/2018.
  • But this went away because no major news outlets were covering it.
• And NOW, Latino Review is reporting that Spider-Man missed the train for Civil War, though he is absolutely, positively, certainly, definitely, completely, wholeheartedly appearing in Avengers: Infinity War Part 1.
  • Latino Review isn’t the MOST trustworthy when I’m looking for movie news.
    • Typically I see Entertainment Weekly’s Facebook post about a news story, by which point it’s about as close to fact as it’s gonna get.
  • But I’m so tired of seeing these rumors that have been going around since God-knows-when, and know that everyone’s talking about it again, I’m gonna talk about it!
• So remember, this is still a rumor for now, I’m gonna speculate what I think will happen, or what would be best to happen, though nothing is confirmed, and none of this may ever happen.
• Super long intro is now done, so let’s go!

Amazing Spider-Man 3

• Some people downright HATED The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
  • I was not one of those people.
  • I thought The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was a really fun movie that had solid lead performances, some cartoony performances, really good emotion, REALLY great action, but a muddled storyline.
  • I’d probably score it around a 3.75/5, but it’s a hard one to score.
    • Cuz I’m such a big Spider-Man fan, and I didn’t think it was a bad movie, I had fun!
  • But all artistic criticisms/hatreds aside, let’s look at money.
    • Financially speaking, TASM2 was not a flop.
    • Many think that Sony is planning to sell Spider-Man back to Marvel because Amazing Spider-Man 2 was a financial catastrophe, that didn’t make back its budget, and put Sony in shark water.
      • This is not true at all.
    • The problem is that Sony was building up Amazing Spider-Man 2 as an Avengers-like event film that hundreds of thousands would see on Day 1.
    • They spent more than they should have on advertisements, and other marketing for the film.
    • So when it only made back a pretty good profit ($700 million instead of $1 billion) it didn’t seem as good.
  • And then they blinked.
    • Sony had a really ambitious slate of movies including The Sinister Six (2015/16), Amazing Spider-Man 3 (2016), Amazing Spider-Man 4 (2018), Venom: Carnage (2017), a female led movie called Glass Shards or something like that? (2017)
    • But because of some mixed reviews and an okay box-office total, they backed up and thought it was all a bad idea.
    • THAT is where they went wrong.
  • If Sony kept to that schedule, the haters would continue to hate in their comment sections, but the fans would continue to watch the content.
  • The whole backing-up just made fans more concerned and uncertain about the future of Spidey at Sony.
  • THEN came the Sony hacks.
    • Sony isn’t a totally on-their-game company as it is, and they weren’t making the largest monetary sums before the hacks.
    • Following these hacks though, they need some cash. Urgently.
  • For this reason, I think that The Amazing Spider-Man 3 will still happen at Sony.
    • There was a casting call for extras a couple weeks ago in Atlanta for the movie, which some people used as confirmation against the Marvel rumors.
    • I think that’s bs for confirmation, but is a sign that the movie will take place.
      • (More on this later though.)
    • If Sony takes down the budget by a couple million dollars, and focuses on their characters as opposed to franchise-building, then they could round out a fairly okay trilogy.
      • I personally thought that original Amazing Spider-Man was okay, but way too copied from Raimi’s original.
      • Then Amazing Spider-Man 2 was fairly solid.
      • And if Amazing Spider-Man 3 is ‘well, good…’ then you’ve seen what you’ve needed to see without the franchise dying off.
      • It would make the unneeded reboot seem like it was fun enough, and good for being around.
    • But WHILE Amazing Spider-Man 3 is in production, and slated for release in November 2016 or March 2017 (my prediction dates) then Marvel has the rights to the character in time for Infinity War.

Introduction to Spider-Man in the MCU

• It would have been SO cool for Spider-Man to be in Civil War, but I’ll discuss that in a later post of “Why I’m Excited: Marvel Civil War.”
  • It’s been too long since I’ve done a “Why I’m Excited”…
• By 2018, hopefully Sony will have released Amazing Spider-Man 3, but one movie (no matter how much it makes) will be able to pull Sony out of the financial toilet, especially after these hacks.
• I think that it goes down one of three ways.
  • The first is if Andrew Garfield is Marvel’s Spider-Man, which I doubt will happen but it would be really awesome if he was.
    • At first, I didn’t think he was a good Peter Parker at all because he seemed too cool for it.
    • But then in Amazing Spider-Man 2, he was awkward as well as witty and cool, like Spider-Man should be, and I really wanted to see that again.
    • If Garfield was to come back, I think that Marvel could do a post-credits scene at the end of Civil War setting up Spidey for the future in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
  • The second scenario is if Marvel recasts Spider-Man after the release of The Amazing Spider-Man 3.
    • In this case, I think that Spider-Man shows up in a post-credits scene to Guardians 2 or Black Panther (most likely the latter).
    • And I’ll talk more later of who I think should play Peter Parker when he’s recast, because I believe he will be.
  • The third and most likely scenario (despite my previous 1100 words of speculation) is that there is no Amazing Spider-Man 3 and Marvel takes back Spider-Man with no other Sony opportunities.
    • In this scenario, Spider-Man is definitely in a Civil War post-credits scene.

The Avengers: Infinity War Part 1

• So if we are to believe that this Latino Review article is true, then we’re to believe that Spider-Man will have his first full-length, big screen appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
• Latino Review went into some big spoilers of Civil War and Infinity War Part 1 which I will not be discussing here, though if those spoilers are also true, then Infinity War: Part 1 is the perfect time for Spider-Man to be introduced.
• After the Infinity Wars, I’m assuming that Thor, Captain America, and Black Widow will all be retired.
  • I’m assuming the RDJ will continue as Tony Stark through Phases 4, 5, and 6, and Bruce Banner will pop in occasionally (if he isn’t the villain), but other than that, the Phase 3 new heroes will take over.
• Enter Spider-Man.
• Peter Parker could be a really solid leader of the Avengers in future Marvel movies if they set him up well in Infinity War Part 1 and cast a good actor.
• If they do keep Andrew Garfield too, then it’s easy to explain why he wasn’t around for the Chitauri or Ultron events.
  • Amazing Spider-Mans 1, 2, and 3 all took place within 1-2 years that are contained between Ultron and Infinity War.
  • That solves that problem.

Re-Casting Peter Parker

• Who should be Spider-Man next?
• Some names I heard being thrown around were Logan Lerman, Tobey Maguire, and Drake Bell.
  • The first of which would be an interesting choice, though I feel like he would be too awkward as Spider-Man and not come off as a leader, like Marvel would want Spidey to be.
  • The second of which is not happening! There will be no Tobey Maguire return, sorry.
  • The third of which is already the voice of Spider-Man in the animated series, but I couldn’t really see him on the big screen because he feels too old and would be better if he stuck to cartoon Spider-Man.
• Some names I thought of/heard whispers of and really liked though are: Ansel Elgort, Daniel Radcliffe, Jake Gyllenhaal, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
  • Joseph Gordon Levitt would be a really cool Peter Parker, but I see that he’s doing more serious films now and for the longest time when they were casting Amazing Spider-Man 2 I was thinking that he would be Harry Osborn, which immediately disqualifies him in my eyes.
  • Jake Gyllenhaal would be solid, but probably too old and again, he’s focusing on more serious acting now which he’s doing SO well at and probably wouldn’t want to ruin.
  • Daniel Radcliffe would be a great pick, since he isn’t doing anything now, and would bring the nerdy, yet sweet, yet awesome flavor that Tobey Maguire had back to the Peter Parker character.
  • Ansel Elgort is actually above Logan Lerman and Daniel Radcliffe as my first choice for the role.
    • I think he would be sweet, charming, yet still quirky enough.
    • Probably a lot of fun as Spider-Man and Peter Parker.
    • He’d be a great leader.
    • Not to mention, the ladies would all flock to see him in the theaters…
      • Which could get annoying, but whatever…
    • And leave who you think should play Peter Parker in the comments down below, I’d love to hear any and all suggestions!

Probability

• Probability: the chance that something could happen.
• I first started getting big into film about 2 and a half years ago. Since about a year and a half ago, I’ve heard these “Will Spider-Man go back to Marvel?” rumors and never bought it.
• BUT I started to at the end of the summer when Sony pulled their schedule.
• Even when Marvel announced their Phase 3 plans, I had a sliver of hope in my mind that Kevin Feige would pull Andrew Garfield on stage right at the end and say, “oh by the way, Spidey in Civil War, and Spectacular Spider-Man in 2017!!!”
• That didn’t happen, which didn’t bum me out or anything, but it would’ve been rad nevertheless.
• Then when the first reports of the Sony hack came out and we heard that discussions were going on between Sony and Marvel…
  • Which made it actually seem realistic.
• Then the whole Russo Brothers in 2016/17 thing came out.
  • And we heard that there were two drafts of the Civil War script: one with Spider-Man and Black Panther, one with just Black Panther.
  • Just the idea that a script with Spider-Man in it exists proves that something is going on.
• And now this post with really passionate and seemingly convinced writing.
  • All of this stuff happening within one to two months of each other.
• The Schmoes Know said it best on their most recent podcast: with all this smoke, there’s gonna be a fire nearby.
• And though this is still a rumor, I think that we’re gonna hear within 2015 that Spider-Man will definitely be making an appearance in 2018 and 2019 fighting along side Iron Man, Black Panther, and Hulk in The Avengers: Infinity War Parts 1 and 2.
  • As well as a great trilogy and 3 Avengers films after that.
• So whether it be tomorrow, Comic-Con (most likely) or December 31^st, I think that by the end of 2015 we’ll know that Spider-Man is back at Marvel.
  • And I bet it will be sooner rather than later.

***

So guys, those are my absurdly long thoughts on the whole “Is Spider-Man Going Back to Marvel?!?!?” debacle that’s been surrounding us over the past few months! I’ve gotten some comments asking me to write about it, but I did want to wait for my further thoughts and more developments. Now, 2200 words later, here ya go! This is actually my 2^nd longest post on this site after my Community review, so I put in a lot of time and maybe waited for too many developments! In any case, did you guys enjoy this post, and what do you all think will happen to Spider-Man? And who should play him next? Let me know your answers to all of these down below, and as always, thanks for reading guys.