Kevin Feige Confirms Rebooted Marvel SPIDER-MAN Will Be High School PETER PARKER
Spider-Man is going back to school... literally
After news hit that Sony had enlisted Marvel Studios to revive the flagging Spider-Man film franchise, rumors swirled as to the identity and age of the character behind the mask. Would it be a teenage Peter Parker, or more grown up? Would it be Peter Parker at all, or perhaps Miles Morales? An answer to those questions came today when Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige spoke with Collider in a video interview.
“In terms of the age of an actor we’ll eventually cast, I don’t know. In terms of the age of what we believe Peter Parker is, I’d say 15-16 is right,” Feige says.
While it’s certainly possible Miles Morales could join the cast later and become Spider-Man as in the Ultimate Spider-Man comic series, it’ll be the classic Peter Parker Spider-Man joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
One might assume that with aim of the character’s age range it would limit the part to actual teenage actors, it actually doesn’t. 2000’s Spider-Man had a teenage Peter Parker played by a then 25-year old Tobey Maguire, while Amazing Spider-Man in 2012 was played by a then 29 year old Andrew Garfield.
“We want to play with Spider-Man in the high school years because frankly there’ve been five Spider-Man films and the amazing thing about it is, even though there’ve been five Spider-Man films, there are so many things from the comics that haven’t been done yet,” said Feige. “Not just characters or villains or supporting characters, but sides to his character. The most obvious being the ‘young, doesn’t quite fit in’ kid before his powers, and then the fella that puts on a mask and swings around and fights bad guys and doesn’t shut up, which is something we want to play with and we’re excited about.”
Feige said that the teenage aspect to Peter Parker as Spider-Man would be something Marvel would play up, especially contrasting with the adult nature of all of the other current Marvel cinematic heroes.
“I think it was midway through the first film that he graduated high school. At the beginning of the second Marc Webb film, he graduated high school. And some of my favorite Spider-Man arcs and Spider-Man stories, he’s in high school for a lot of it,” said the Marvel Studios President. “We want to explore that. That also makes him very, very different from any of our other characters in the MCU, which is something else we want to explore: how unique he is when now put against all these other characters.”
While Feige was in a sharing mood, he didn’t say if Spider-Man would debut as rumored in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War or would wait until 2017’s new solo Spider-Man film.
You can see the full video interview here: