Spider-Man: No Way Home Writers Confirm They Planned for Even More Characters to Return

December 29, 2021, 11:06pm

Spider-Man: No Way Home is about as packed as superhero movies can get these days. While it doesn’t reach the heights of the Avengers: Endgame ensemble, the movie dives across the multiverse to snatch up any characters it can. The end result incldues appearances from both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield—the last two actors to play Peter Parker in live-ation prior to the Marvel Cinematic Universe—and a whole slew of villains.

Believe it or not, there were even more characters in the first drafts of the flick. In a new chat with Variety, No Way Home writers Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna admitted they wrote their first draft with as many characters in it as possible.

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“Let’s write the script that is the kitchen sink and we’ll just act like we were going to get everything we wish for,” McKenna told the trade. “And like Peter’s wish, it became a nightmare, and it required very, very talented people to help us not die at the end.”

That apparently included appearances by Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), and Sally Field’s Aunt May, though those three never appeared or shot scenes for the movie.

“We went down different roads with different characters that just didn’t fit,” added McKenna. “We can’t get into the details of that because it might be the kind of thing where they’ll find a way to explore those ideas. So I’d hate to spoil anything, because I think we had a lot of fun.”

Sommers went on to admit the first draft the duo wrote was certainly more than the studio and story required.

“The first draft, we bit off more than we could chew,” he confirmed. “Maybe some would argue that we still bit off more than we can chew.”

Spider-Man: No Way Home is now in theaters.

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