SPIDER-MAN Producers Say We’ll Only Ever See Peter Parker On-screen

Earlier this week, Amazing Spider-Man 2 star Andrew Garfield expressed his interest in the idea, that, when his run as Peter Parker is set to run out, they don’t recast the role, but instead pass the torch to another hero – Ultimate Spider-Man‘s Miles Morales.

I have given that thought. I think one of the amazing things about Spider-Man is that you don’t see skin color when he’s in the suit. You don’t see any religious beliefs. You don’t see any denominations. Everyone can project themselves into that suit. It’s incredibly powerful in that way. So of course I think it’s important that the openness, the casting, in terms of who could be Spider-Man, could be absolutely anyone. A hero is a hero, whether you’re a man, woman, gay, lesbian, straight, black, white or red all over – it doesn’t matter.

 

Miles Morales was a huge moment in this character’s comic book life. And I do believe that we can do that. It’s something I’m really interested in figuring out; an eloquent way of coexisting, or passing on the torch. I don’t have an answer, but I think it’s actually a really important move. I think it’s a really beautiful and important move.

No matter how tone-deaf the ending of Amazing Spider-Man was, it’s really hard not to like Garfield, both in the role and as a fan made good.

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However, it didn’t take long for the franchise’s producers to squash those discussions before the even started. When asked by Playlist about the possiblity of other Spider-Men(?) down the line, this was Avi Arad’s response:

No. The one thing you cannot do, when you have a phenomena that has stood the test of time, you have to be true to the real character inside – who is Peter Parker? What are the biggest effects on his life? Then you can draw in time, and you can consider today’s world in many ways. But to have multiple ones… I don’t know if you remember, but Marvel tried it. And it was almost the end of Spider-Man.

It is, of course, worth pointing out here that Arad’s tenure with Marvel as a company lasted from 1996 to 2006, so he’s largely talking about the massive clusterfuck that was Ben Reilly. While still producing some Marvel films (mostly the Sony and Fox ones), he’d cut ties with the publishing arm long before the successes of Miles Morales in Ultimate Spider-Man and Doc Ock in Superior Spider-Man.

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Skott Stotland is a thousand monkeys in a people costume. They have been writing for the internet for over a decade.

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