Kevin Feige has been discussing Spider-Man’s introduction into the MCU, and says that his next solo movie will not be a re-telling of the origin story. Feige confirmed that the actor he is looking to cast in the film will be around 15 years of age, with the story set to keep him firmly rooted in high school.
“We want to play with Spider-Man in the high school years,” says Feige to Collider, “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. 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.”
“Some of my favorite Spider-Man arcs and Spider-Man stories, he’s in high school for a lot of it,” continues Feige. “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.”
As for the character’s origins, Feige is confident that that part of the story is already well known enough to be omitted here. “In Spider-Man’s very specific case, where there have been two retellings of that… for us we are going to take it for granted that people know that, and the specifics,” he explains.
What’s more, Feige goes on to explain that the character already exists within the MCU… we just haven’t seen him on screen yet. “There is a young kid [already] running around New York City in a homemade version of the Spider-Man costume in the MCU,” he says. “You just don’t know it yet.”
The new Spidey is expected to make his first appearance in Captain America: Civil War in 2016 before getting his own solo film the following year.
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