The Spider-Man reboot isn't hitting theaters until 2017, but we're really close to finding out who will play the next Spidey. That's because the reboot is backed by Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios, meaning that our friendly neighborhood superhero is moving to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where he can appear in any superhero movie owned by Marvel or Disney. The new Spider-Man is actually scheduled to appear in the upcoming Marvel film Captain America: Civil War, which starts filming next week—so the race to cast the newest Spider-Man is on.
Here's the shortlist from Collider:
Per The Wrap, Nat Wolff (The Fault in Our Stars), Asa Butterfield (Ender’s Game), Tom Holland (The Impossible), Timothee Chalamet (Interstellar), and Liam James (The Way Way Back), are among the young actors that are under consideration to play the new Spider-Man. Marvel and Sony are wanting to go younger with this iteration of the superhero, as evidenced by the various actors mentioned above; they range in age from 18 to 20.
Marvel's cinematic genius Kevin Feige explained to Collider that they want to cast Peter Parker as a higher schooler because there's "so many things from the comics that haven't been done yet. Not just characters or villains or support character, but sides to [Spider-Man's] character. The most obvious being the 'young, doesn't quite fit in' kid before his powers."
With Feige at the wheel, there's very little that could go wrong—he's been behind 10 consecutive blockbusters for Marvel. So the throwback to Peter Parker's adolescent years could help revive the franchise. And besides, anything would be better than Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man—The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was the lowest grossing Spidey film of Sony's five so far.
