An animated crossover that would have united Spider-Man actors Tom Holland, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield was axed from the climax of Into the Spider-Verse, one of its writers has confirmed.
The 2018 film saw teenager Miles Morales don the Spider-Man suit, and discover a shared multi-verse of different dimensions that each feature their own unique Spider-Man.
As part of a Twitter “watch party” for the film, co-writer Christopher Miller said that he and writing partner Phil Lord originally envisioned an ending that would have featured the voices of Holland, Maguire and Garfield – all actors who have played the character in live-action movies. Unfortunately, backers at Sony turned the idea down.
“We pitched the Sony brass an ambitious tag involving Spider-Ham, Tobey, Andrew, and Tom,” Miller wrote. “They felt it was ‘too soon’.”
Spider-Ham, voiced by John Mulaney in the finished film, is an anthropomorphic spider bitten by a radioactive pig.
While Miller’s planned crossover didn’t happen, the voice of Oscar Isaac does appear in the film’s tag sequence as a Spider-Man from the year 2099.
If Miller’s plans came to fruition, Into the Spider-Verse would have marked Maguire’s first time playing the role since 2007’s Spider-Man 3, and Garfield’s first time since 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
Speaking to The Independent in 2019, Garfield said he “worked harder” on his two Spider-Man films than anything else in his career, but that he “didn’t feel represented” by the franchise and clashed with Sony.
“There was an interview I gave where I said, ‘Why can’t Peter explore his bisexuality in his next film? Why can’t [his girlfriend] MJ be a guy?’ I was then put under a lot of pressure to retract that and apologise for saying something that is a legitimate thing to think and feel,” he explained.
A sequel to Into the Spider-Verse will be released on 7 October, 2022.
