'Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse' Could've Had A Scene With Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, And Tom Holland

In early December, we wrote about how former Spider-Man star Tobey Maguire was once in consideration to play Peter B. Parker in Sony's Oscar-nominated animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. That role as an older, out of shape web-slinger eventually went to New Girl actor Jake Johnson, but Maguire wasn't the only former Spider-Man to be on a wishlist for the acclaimed animated feature.

It turns out that Andrew Garfield, who played Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man movies, and Tom Holland, who currently plays Parker in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, were both written into an early version of the screenplay. If all went according to plan, they would have shared a scene with Maguire, which would have united the Spideys for the first time. 

In a new episode of The Q&A Podcast with Jeff Goldsmith (via ScreenRant), Spider-Verse co-writer/co-director Rodney Rothman revealed that not only was Maguire being eyed for a role, but the other two live-action Spider-Men actors also made it into one of the drafts of the script:

"I wrote a scene that had every, that had Tom Holland and Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire in the same scene and... I don't want to get into it but I did write that scene, but there's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of anxiety around the movie generally and there was anxiety about confusing people."

From a nervous executive's perspective, I can see how they could have thought it might have been a bit much to include those guys in this movie. Spider-Verse deals with some pretty heady concepts as it is without introducing the wrinkle of Maguire voicing Peter B. Parker, because that character technically isn't the same as the one Maguire played in the Sam Raimi trilogy. Adding Garfield and Holland into the mix may have been a bit easier if they were voicing the same versions of the characters they previously played in live-action, but that would have launched a whole barrage of thinkpieces about whether other Marvel Studios characters would appear in upcoming animated movies. As it stands, Sony and Marvel are still keeping things separate...for now.

"There were many thoughts about where we could put Tobey Maguire and others," Rothman said previously. "I think after this film, those thoughts might have a little more traction. But before this movie, and introducing the idea of the 'Spider-Verse' to the audience, I think everybody was afraid that it would just really confuse people. But wow, it would have been fun." Sounds like there may be another opportunity to work those actors into the sequel, and considering the great job the filmmakers did keeping some major surprises from the first movie until it premiered, I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up being one of the surprises in Into the Spider-Verse 2.