Geekery: Spider-Man’s Journey Back to Marvel
Peter Parker was definitely not an after thought…
Marvel had eyes on having him in Civil War back when it was Avengers 2.5 – in 2013. Screenwriter Christopher Markus was instructed to write scenes before the rights for the character were even requested. In a recent interview he said:
“At one point we were told, ‘Run scenarios for a movie that Spider-Man would be in. We don’t have him yet, but we might ask. “So we worked up some scenes and had some spots for him, and then he was out. And then relatively late in the day he came back. And because he always appeared in [a] recruitment section, we were able to leave that kind of baggy and self-contained, and not tied to too many other things, so he could come and go if we wanted him. Plus, we could expand or contract Black Panther in the movie to sort of fill the hole if Peter Parker wasn’t going to be in the movie. So we had good options.”
While the studios eeked out a deal the production team hedged their bets they’d be able to use what they’d created. Director Anthony Russo had this to say about the situation:
“That was part of the tricky thing. We had to make a commitment to the character of Spider-Man long before the deal was in place to let us use him. When you’re telling a story you have to fully commit. We had to be fully committed that that character needed to be in the story, and the story couldn’t happen without him. So we were there psychologically, and you couldn’t do it any other way. But you are sort of exposed because, yeah, you could get the bad news that the deal doesn’t work out. So we’re eternally grateful to Kevin Feige and all the good folks at Sony, that they were able to work out a deal, because we would have been really left hanging without him.”
Sony and Marvel announced they’d made a deal in February – the press release mentioned that the two companies were exploring “opportunities to integrate characters from the MCU into future Spider-Man films.” Behind the scenes it wasn’t a sure thing for Civil War. Tom Holland auditioned on set and was secretly cast in June of last year – and even at that point they weren’t entirely sure they would be able to use the footage.
Thankfully everything fell into line. From all reports Spidey’s presence and storyline in Civil War doesn’t feel forced or out of place – a testament to the production team’s forethought.
Spider-Man: Homecoming rumors are starting to fly – it takes place after Civil War on the timeline, but with Robert Downey Jr.’s involvement confirmed there’s bound to be some flash back sequences to fill in the story. At the same time it’s being said this isn’t going to be a cross over… so… who knows? No word on a villain. We’ve got till July of next year to figure all of that out.
Enough of Spider-Man…
Who’s going tonight?!
