Tobey Maguire Was Almost Cast as Peter Parker in the ‘Spider-Verse’ Franchise

Sony’s most recent animated movie ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ recently premiered in theaters, and it already outgrossed its 2018 predecessor ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.’ The movie received universal acclaim from critics and the audience, who praised the animation, voice-acting, writing, humor, and fan service. The fans are already hyped for the final part of this trilogy, ‘Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse,’ which is set to come out next March, and fans are already debating whether this could ultimately be one of the next superhero trilogies ever.

Even though the latest live-action Spider-Man movie, ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home,’ assembled all three live-action Spider-Men on the big screen, the ‘Spider-Verse’ franchise showed all the advantages of the animation. One of those advantages is that in the animated movie, you can realize scenes that would be much harder to pull off in live-action. During 140 minutes of its runtime, ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ featured literally hundreds of different Spider-People, and although all of them combined aren’t as popular as Maguire, Garfield, and Holland, what ‘Spider-Verse’ franchise created is ultimately very impressive.

Tobey Maguire was initially considered to voice Peter Parker in the ‘Spider-Verse’ franchise!

The story of the ‘Spider-Verse’ franchise is mainly told from the perspective of Miles Morales, a Spider-Man that was first introduced in ‘Ultimate Fallout’ in August 2011. The popularity of the character has risen among mainstream audiences thanks to 2018’s ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ and the 2020 video game ‘Spider-Man: Miles Morales.’

But even though Miles is the main Spider-Man of the ‘Spider-Verse’ franchise, Peter Parker still appeared, and he was almost voiced by the original Spider-Man actor, Tobey Maguire, as Rodney Rothman, who wrote and directed ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,’ and produced its sequel, recently revealed. The idea was later abandoned to avoid any confusion between Peter Parker from Sam Raimi’s original Spider-Man trilogy and the ‘Spider-Verse’ franchise.

“There were many thoughts about where we could put Tobey Maguire and others. I think after this film, those thoughts might have a little more traction. But before this movie and introducing the idea of the “Spider-Verse” to the audience, I think everybody was afraid that it would just really confuse people. But wow, it would have been fun.”

Rodney Rothman for ScreenCrush

Even though Sony is still struggling with their live-action cinematic universe based on Marvel characters, commonly known as Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (with no Spider-Man in it), no one can deny they’ve done a hell of a job with the first two installments of the ‘Spider-Verse’ franchise. It would be fun if Tobey Maguire voiced this older Peter Parker, but Jake Johnson is also doing a great job.

Although the writers Phil Lord and Chris Miller recently confirmed that the upcoming ‘Beyond the Spider-Verse’ will conclude Miles Morales’ story, this animated franchise will spawn a lot more movies for us to enjoy. So far, we only know about the ‘Spider-Woman’ spin-off movie with Hailee Steinfeld’s Gwen Stacy, and who knows how many more movies we’re going to get from this truly fruitful franchise.

‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ is now playing in theaters worldwide. ‘Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse’ is scheduled to be released on March 29, 2024.

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