Murphy's Multiverse

Tag: No Way Home

  • How Marvel and Sony Pitched ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ to Andrew Garfield

    How Marvel and Sony Pitched ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ to Andrew Garfield

    The open secret of multiple Spider-Men in Spider-Man: No Way Home is finally no longer a secret. While many fans believed Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield would join Tom Holland as variants of Peter Parker, it had not been fully acknowledged in the media until the film finally released. Variety has managed to speak to Andrew Garfield about his role in the film and how it came about. It’s the first time the actor can openly discuss it since being forced to deny it for months. In the interview, he highlights how Amy Pascal, Kevin Feige, and Jon Watts provided an exciting and empowering pitch for him to join the project: 

    I wasn’t expecting to ever have a conversation again about potentially playing Peter Parker. I felt very excited to just to be a fan again. But I got this call from Amy Pascal and Kevin Feige and Jon Watts with this idea. It was immediately undeniable. It sounded incredibly fun, incredibly spiritual — trippy and thematically interesting. On a base level, as a Spider-Man fan, just the idea of seeing three Spider-Men in the same frame was enough. The pitch was really, really enticing. They said, “You played this character in your way and what would you want to explore if you had an opportunity? If you were dumped into this other universe and faced with this younger you and this older you, how will you respond?

    Andrew Garfield

    It seems like there were multiple levels to Garfield being excited about the project, especially as a fan of the character. The way they let him as an actor explore the future of the character he once played is in keeping with the film’s themes of identity and responsibility. That exploration and the success of his iteration of the character specifically from this film has proved fruitful. How well those successes have landed with audiences suggests Garfield might like another go around if he can create similar thematic and emotional resonances with his role in future projects. 

    Source: Variety 

  • Andrew Garfield Improvised A Key ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Line

    Andrew Garfield Improvised A Key ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Line

    Now that Spider-Man: No Way Home was released a few weeks ago, more behind-the-scenes stories from the production are beginning to emerge. While it was an open secret that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield would appear alongside Tom Holland, there was lots of uncertainty about how they would each play their version of Peter Parker.  In relation to Marvel and Sony’s initial pitch to him Garfield spoke to Variety about how he approached his Peter in relation to the others: 

    We talked a lot about mentorship. We talked a lot about brotherhood and about what it is to be the older brother, younger brother and the middle brother. There’s also a thing of seeing someone you love walking down a path that you’ve already walked down, and you know it doesn’t lead [to] the place where you ultimately meant to go.

    Andrew Garfield

    Having each played the character of Peter Parker, Garfield said that the three actors had “deeper conversations” about their experiences with the character. It might have been these that prompted an unscripted moment in the film:

    There’s a line I improvised in the movie, looking at [Maguire and Holland] and I tell them I love them. That was just me loving them.

    Andrew Garfield

    It’s great to hear that one of the most heartwarming moments in the film was improvised and speaks to a warmth between the actors as well as the characters. It was also probably a feeling that many people in the audience had while watching alongside the characters. It’s exciting for fans to know that the actor’s comradery translated from their characters to the actors themselves. 


    Source: Variety

  • ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Concept Artist Shares a Possible Look at Tom Holland in the Venom Suit

    ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Concept Artist Shares a Possible Look at Tom Holland in the Venom Suit

    Spider-Man: No Way Home is filled to the brim with Easter eggs to the cinematic history of the iconic webhead. Yet, the biggest surprise came in the form of the first post-credit sequence where Tom Hardy‘s Venom makes an appearance before vanishing once again. Well, he doesn’t vanish until a small part of the symbiote remains in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It opens the door to the arrival of his iconic black suit and luckily concept artist Thomas du Crest, who worked on No Way Home shared a possible first look at their design:

    The Venom design looks great on Holland, especially with the iconic logo from the comics. It’s uncertain if they’ll wait some time to build upon that tease, but it’s great how they took the suit’s Secret Wars origin by having it be from another dimension. As du Crest points out he doesn’t have the go on the actual No Way Home concept art, this is probably something he made in his spare time that could become relevant once they tackle that specific storyline later down the line. Still, it’s an exciting possible first look at how the film’s Venom designs would work in the MCU.

    Source: Twitter

  • Sony Kicks-Off ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’s Oscar Campaign for Best Picture

    Sony Kicks-Off ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’s Oscar Campaign for Best Picture

    We’ve heard rumblings of Sony’s interest in trying to nab an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, especially after Spider-Man: No Way Home reignited the international box office, as well as its critical reception. Given how much money the film made, Sony saw the opportunity and has seemingly already started its “For Your Consideration” campaign, as shared by @mavericksmovies. They are all-in, hoping to nab as many nominations as they can and there are high hopes for that Best Picture. If it does manage to get one, it would be the second Marvel Studios project to accomplish this following Black Panther in 2018.

    The pictures are in low-resolution, as they aren’t officially released. They can be commonly found through various sites that are frequented by people in the industry to get their attention. It’s not uncommon, as these competitions are just as much about personal preference by the judges, as well as what film grabs their attention. In a year like 2021, there aren’t many films that left this strong of an impact and it’ll be interesting to see if the superhero genre has a chance at joining the nomination once again.

    Source: Twitter

  • ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Starts Off 2022 Strong Passing $600M Domestically as ‘The Matrix Ressurections’ Falls Behind

    ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Starts Off 2022 Strong Passing $600M Domestically as ‘The Matrix Ressurections’ Falls Behind

    Well, this is certainly a way to start off the year. Spider-Man: No Way Home continues to push through even as uncertainty remains with the Omicron variant potentially putting a halt to any film’s momentum. Still, just a week ago the film passed $500M at the domestic box office and has now already managed to swing past $600M. It’s a motivating start to the New Year for many theater owners and Hollywood, but not everything has been rosy at the domestic box office.

    The Matrix Resurrections and The King’s Man have been struggling at the box office. The latter managed to outpace the former, which may be attributed to the simultaneous release on HBO Max. It only managed to nab $3.8M over the entire weekend, which puts it at $31M and far out of range for a potential $100M domestic release. The latest Matrix entry was overtaken not only by Matthew Vaughn‘s latest entry but also American Underdog, a film about NFL quarterback Kurt Warner.

    Still, the family-focused Sing 2 was a shining light as it held on to the second spot with $19.6M. It’s made $89.8M in 14 days, it’ll reach the benchmark faster than Disney’s Encanto, which only managed it now since its initial release over Thanksgiving. The big test will be how The Batman performs in March to see where 2022 is heading.

    Source: The Hollywood Reporter, Twitter

  • ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Creatives Looked to Return Peter Parker His Comic Book Roots

    ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Creatives Looked to Return Peter Parker His Comic Book Roots

    While Tom Holland’s time as Spider-Man has been full of critical and box office success, it has not been without criticisms. Among the most common is that Peter’s relationship with Tony Stark gave the young hero too much, too soon, and took him far away from his comic book origins. Fans grew tired of Parker’s dependance on Stark’s technology, calling him “Iron Boy”, and hoped, with Stark now out of the picture, that Parker would have to learn to fend for himself. Stark tech was present once again in Spider-Man: No Way, both by way of the Ion Spider suit and the fabricator that helped Parker synthesize cures for the multiversal villains. By the end of the film, however, audiences saw a Parker who more closely resembled the young hero from the comics, having learned the true cost of being Spider-Man. And according to the film’s writing duo, Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna, putting Parker in that place was part of their mission.

    Fans of the long-running comic book series are used to Peter having to deal with what he’s come to call “Parker Luck.” It’s never been strictly defined by Marvel (I don’t think), but Parker Luck seems like a very specific branch of Murphy’s Law: if anything can go wrong for Peter, it will. More acutely, it seems to explore the inverse relationship between the time Peter spends doing good deeds as Spider-Man and the amount of GOOD things that happen to him. In Spider-Man: No Way Home, Peter’s acceptance of his moral mission as Spider-Man, morals defined by his Aunt May, came at the cost of those he loved most, as McKenna explained:

    He was trying to do what May taught him and that made the sacrifice that much more difficult, because it blew up in his face and it got her killed. Then he started questioning that morality in a way that he never really questioned because he hasn’t been put to the test in that way.

    How did Parker come to terms with those questions? As we see by the end of the film, he seems to have come to terms with the fact that in order to be the hero he wants to be, there could be no getting around the spell cast by Strange to make people forget him. Though he promised to find MJ and Ned and “make them remember” him, McKenna says he comes to the realization that making that choice would only put them in danger:

    You want to have that doughnut scene be him making the last piece of the sacrifice. “I could tell them everything. I can try to get my friends back. But I’d be going right back to the place of endangering my loved ones by bringing them into my life. And I can’t have that.”

    Peter makes the mature choice after MJ mentions that her cut doesn’t really hurt anymore. While her words describe the physical pain of the cut, Peter realizes that the MJ’s emotional pain of losing him has also dissipated and chooses to leave her and Ned happy and safe, making, as McKenna said, the final step in his sacrifice and choosing not to try to continue live in two worlds, as Doctor Strange warned him. As many astute fans have noticed, it’s only at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home that we are finally getting the version of the character that made him so beloved over the years. Moving forward, Holland’s Parker is on his own without the benefit of Stark’s tech or the support of those around him, meaning the next trilogy of MCU films will look a whole lot different and, potentially, a whole lot more like the comics.

  • ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Writers Address Why Doctor Strange’s Spell Drew Venom to the MCU

    ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Writers Address Why Doctor Strange’s Spell Drew Venom to the MCU

    Magic. In Spider-Man: No Way Home, magic was both the problem and the solution and, because how magic works remains a mystery to us, fans were left with a lot of questions as they walked away from the theaters. Why did Doctor Strange’s original spell-gone-wrong draw Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock into the MCU? Does Strange’s final spell mean the Guardians or Captain Marvel, who weren’t on Earth when it was cast, will forget Peter, too? In an interview with Variety, writers Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna explained their approach to magic in the year’s biggest box office hit.

    The film’s central plot revolved around Peter meeting five villains from previous Spider-Man films and trying to cure them. The mid-credit scene, however, introduced a sixth: Hardy’s Eddie Brock and his alien symbiote companion, Venom. While the other five found themselves involved in a conflict with the Spider-Men, Brock chose to while away his time in Mexico, having drinks and catching up on the history of the MCU. But why was this version of Brock, who has yet to meet a Peter Parker in his own universe, brought to the MCU by the spell? According to the writers, the answer lies in a line spoken in the post-credit scene to Sony’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage, which the duo revealed was actually directed by No Way Home’s Jon Watts.

    In that scene, Brock and Venom are catching up on their telenovelas while hiding out in Mexico when Venom begins to explain to him that he possesses “80 billion light years of hive knowledge across universes” that would “explode” Eddie’s “tiny little brain.” And just as Venom prepares to give Eddie a “taste” of that knowledge, the pair are caught up in Strange’s spell and brought to the MCU. According to McKenna, somewhere in that hive knowledge exits the Parker/Spidey connection, as he explained, “The idea is that the symbiote has knowledge of other universes. Buried in his brain is some knowledge of that connection.” Problem solved.

    The writers were a little less specific in their explanations as to exactly how Strange’s final spell, which made everyone on Earth forget about Peter Parker, would play out down the line, especially with him still actively working as Spider-Man. “Obviously, some sort of magical redaction has occurred,” McKenna explained. “At the end of all this, we didn’t want a lot of people trying to do magical math in their head.” And so, according to Sommers, they left the problems to be solved by their future selves:

    We decided, let’s try to do it in the most satisfying way and just focus on the emotion of it. And then if people have questions about some of those details that didn’t get answered here, we’ll answer them hopefully in another movie somewhere down the line.

    Give that the duo have worked on each of the MCU’s Spidey films so far and that there’s a fourth in development, they’ll probably have to start figuring out how to answer them sooner rather than later.

    Source: Variety

  • ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’s Ending Was Written In Case There Was No More Sequel

    ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’s Ending Was Written In Case There Was No More Sequel

    Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s ending might go down as one of the best in Marvel’s cinematic history and as one of the most tragic. Tom Holland’s run as Peter Parker came full circle, but at a deep cost. After a fun multiversal romp filled to the brim with familiar faces, the story still ended with Peter making an important decision. It still remained his story and while open-ended, could’ve still felt like the perfect bookend to this version of the character. Luckily, it seems that the writers had exactly that in mind.

    In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna discussed the ending of the film, and that they had this in mind when tackling the project, especially as it builds upon the lessons learned from the past two entries. As Sommers points out:

    We knew we were going to end up in that place. As far as what it means, whether or not there are going to be more? All we could do was try to service this story and tell what we felt was the best version of this story. It’s ended in a place where it could feel like a satisfying to this particular Spider-Man, or it definitely could keep going.

    Erik Sommers

    Of course, they also took this ending as a potential “end” for the entire franchise. It’s a given after the dealings already fell apart before they even entered the third film’s production. While a fourth is in development as confirmed by Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige, they did keep that in the back of their mind while writing it.

    I think it’s a fitting ending if it had to end this way. We never know. “Oh, is Tom doing another one? Will we be a part of it?” At a certain point we just got to keep our eye on the one in front of us. “Is this a satisfying story that doesn’t just feel like we are ending on a cliffhanger that is trying to trick you in to the next one?” I do feel with this ending, Peter makes a sacrifice. There are all these Marvel movies about him trying to figure out what it is to be a hero, what it is to be Spider-Man, what it is to be Peter Parker, how to balance both, how to have it all. He gets to have it all at the end of the last movie, right before that tag and then it’s all stripped away. “Oh no! What are they going to do next time?” This one feels like it’s more mature because it really is, as Doctor Strange says, “You are trying to have it all. You can’t have it all. You’ve got to make a choice.”

    Chris McKenna

    They certainly had to tackle quite a challenge when bringing this film to life. Some of the previous entries always end up buckling under the weight of expectation, as they juggle multiple storylines that end up distracting from the core narrative. Here’s hoping to see what the future has in store for Tom Holland‘s take on the character.

    Source: The Hollywood Reporter

  • ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ on Uncle Ben’s Absence in the MCU

    ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ on Uncle Ben’s Absence in the MCU

    There was always one noticeable change in the MCU Spider-Man films in comparison to previous cinematic Spider-Man franchises: the noticeable lack of Uncle Ben. He tends to be the main anchor point for Peter Parker’s morality. Yet, as we learned in Spider-Man: No Way Home, it turns out that this role was taken over by Aunt May. In her last moments, she even echoes the famous “with great power” words from the comics. Well, it seems that Uncle Ben was always on the mind of writers Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna, who worked on all three entries as revealed in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

    I don’t think there was much impetus to put it into the other two movies. This iteration of Spider-Man didn’t start by telling the story of losing Uncle Ben. We started at a different place with Peter. Those words are so tied to Uncle Ben, there didn’t seem to be a natural place for it. We weren’t even thinking necessarily, “Oh, we have to do it in this one.” As the story started to develop, and as we got to the scene with May, we realized, “This is going to be Peter’s Uncle Ben,” and the words are going to come out.

    Erik Sommers

    This arc also plays into how he develops, as McKenna reveals they’ve always played around with the absence of Uncle Ben but realized they can tell a very different origin story that adds more layers to his character, especially with a moral guide like Aunt May adding a new spin on the familiar. They also go on to say that:

    Hopefully you start seeing this is a different Peter Parker. They are all different. They have had different origins. They have had different contexts and this Peter is the only one of these three who has had a Tony Stark in his life. So he chases the fame. He chases this father figure and approval from this billionaire, philanthropist playboy. Then he realizes, “I don’t want to be an Avenger. I’m chasing the wrong thing.” And the next movie was, “I can’t be Iron Man. I can only be Spider-Man.” In this one, there is a whole new way he has to get tested about what these other two guys have been tested by. By the death of a loved one at the hands of a villain. What are you going to do about that? They help him get there

    Chris McKenna

    While many were not happy with the initial direction and Iron Man’s role as a mentor to Spidey, it all paid off as part of a trilogy. As they highlight, the arc was about uncovering what it means to be Spider-Man, which is truly anchored in how the film ends. Here’s hoping that the future lets us explore the lesson that he took away from those events as he grows, for the first time, left to his own devices.

    Source: The Hollywood Reporter

  • ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Already Passed $500M Domestically

    ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Already Passed $500M Domestically

    It looks like Spider-Man: No Way Home is continuing to take over the Box office at an incredible pace. The film has already passed the $500M mark and is currently continuing its dominance of the box office even as Omicron concerns are spreading worldwide. AS pointed out by @Great_Katzby, the film is potentially going to nab an $800M+ domestic run, which would put it on par with massive releases like Avengers: Endgame, and Avatar, as it would end up right between the two’s domestic runs.

    long do

    It’s quite a strong domestic run and if the film manages to release in China, it may continue to inch towards a $2 billion worldwide release. There’s still some time and concerns over the pandemic have slowed down that momentum somewhat, but the film is still a massive success for Sony and Marvel Studios. As we heard a few days ago, the film is on its way to becoming Sony’s most profitable release with the current estimates still seeing it end its run at around $1.75B. It’ll certainly be important to keep an eye on how its box office run develops moving forward.

    Source: Twitter