When it was announced that Marvel and Sony were teaming up in order to bring Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was a very exciting moment. However, with all the excitement, there was one disappointing announcement that came out as well. Andrew Garfield, who was spectacular as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the two Amazing Spider-Man movies, will not return as the Wall Crawler.
There are two reasons for that. First, Marvel wants a fresh start, although there will not be another origin story (thank God). Second, Marvel is sending Peter Parker back to high school. This is kind of cool, because Parker was always fun when he was a high school kid fighting crime along with the big boys, trying the entire time to act grown up. The disappointing part of that, though, is that Spider-Man is regressing by returning to high school.
Luckily, this is Marvel who is working on the character now (even though Sony has “final say” on the stories). Marvel has never failed to excite me with their choices (and I include Iron Man 3, which I thought was brilliant, naysayers be damned).
Anyway, with Peter Parker back in high school and Andrew Garfield out of the picture, there are now two names that have surfaced as replacements. The first is Maze Runner and TV’s Teen Wolf actor Dylan O’Brien and the second is Percy Jackson actor Logan Lerman. Now, I don’t know anything about O’Brien, but Lerman would be a fantastic Peter Parker, keeping the feel that Garfield brought to the character without going to the lame nerd that Tobey Maguire played him with.
With this said, none of the actors have been approached yet and Sony wants to hire a new director to replace Marc Webb before they move on. However, Spider-Man will allegedly appear in Captain America: Civil War in 2016 before he gets his next solo movie in 2017, so an actor needs to be found pretty quickly. Variety also mentioned that there is no word on whether the studio will use Peter Parker or Miles Morales (the Ultimates version that replaced Peter after Peter died), but Sony has said before that Peter Parker is who they will stick with.
News should come soon since Spider-Man needs to be cast before the next Captain America movies goes into production.