Spider-Man Screenwriters Discuss Their Approach To The Marvel Reboot

To keep Marvel films feeling fresh, the studio has implemented a policy in which they assign a [...]

To keep Marvel films feeling fresh, the studio has implemented a policy in which they assign a different genre to each of their films. As an example, Ant-Man was a heist film, Captain America: The Winter Soldier was an espionage-thriller and Guardians of the Galaxy was a space opera. For the Spider-Man reboot, Marvel will borrow elements from John Hughes' ((The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles) films. So, it only seems fitting that the studio would employ John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein to pen the script since they just got done rebooting Hughes' Vacation.

"Our agent helped get our foot in the door with Marvel, sending them a script we had written, and letting them know our track record and that we'd love to move from broad comedy to action and action comedy," Goldstein explained to Deadline how they got the Spidey gig. "Also, it helped that Kevin Feige wanted to draw on the spirit of John Hughes for this Spider-Man, and we had just written and directed a sequel to a John Hughes-created franchise with Vacation. We'd pitched ourselves to both write and direct, and so our pitch included a pretty extensive story outline that appealed to them. After Jon Watts got the directing job, they came back and asked if we would be interested in doing the script. The answer was, yes."

They may have wanted to direct and write Spidey, but ending up with the writing duties is a very nice consolation prize. They're in the early process of writing it. "Lot of specifics still have to be worked out, and we'll be sitting with Jon Watts to figure it out, shortly," Daley said. "We definitely were attracted to approaching it from the standpoint of a real kid, a high school geek who, just because he gets super powers he doesn't really want, doesn't become a superhero right away."

Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield only required well-edited montages to become expert Spider-Men, but Marvel in the driver's seat you can expect Holland to have more room to grow into his new superhero role.

"It's a long journey. You don't want him to become someone capable of saving the world by second act," Goldstein stated. "There is a wish fulfillment opportunity here in that few superheroes are given powers like this, and then has to navigate how to use them in a responsible way. Peter Parker is a geek, like us, and one of the very few superheroes who would actually read comic books. Stan Lee has said he wrote it that way, with wish fulfillment in mind, where most superheroes are very handsome adults, with superpowers. This is a real kid we're talking about."

Tom Holland's Spider-Man/Peter Parker will make a cameo in Captain America: Civil War, which will arrive on May 6, 2016. He'll then star in the Jon Watts-directed solo Spider-Man movie to be released on July 28, 2017.

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