Spider-Man 3: Marvel’s Kevin Feige Is a Fan of Jamie Foxx’s Electro

Marvel Studios president and producer Kevin Feige once expressed praise for Jamie Foxx as super-charged supervillain Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, a role Foxx will reprise in Sony and Marvel’s Spider-Man 3. Feige, an executive producer on The Amazing Spider-Man but not its 2014 sequel pitting Andrew Garfield’s wallcrawler against the electric enemy played by Foxx, is overseeing the untitled Far From Home followup co-financed by Sony and Disney under a new deal reached in late 2019. Before Feige swayed Sony to bring a rebooted Spider-Man (Tom Holland) into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, the prolific producer offered notes on Sony’s Amazing Spider-Man 2.

In a November 2013 email sent to then-Sony co-chairperson Amy Pascal, who was in that position during the Sony Pictures hack in 2014, Feige gave insight on Amazing Spider-Man 2 that included praise and constructive criticism in regards to Electro:

“Really love Electro – feels like you may not need the scene in his apartment, which makes him seems completely crazy and hard to relate too [sic],” Feige wrote in the leaked email, referring to Electro’s mild-mannered alter-ego Max Dillon.

In Amazing Spider-Man 2, Dillon is depicted as an overlooked Oscorp employee and a self-proclaimed “nobody.” In the scene taking place in his lonely apartment, covered wall-to-wall in Spidey-obsessed paraphernalia, the ravings of a delusional Max culminates in an imagined conversation with his superhero “best friend.”

Feige also commented on Max’s transformation into Electro, which occurs when the hapless Max — an electrical engineer — tumbles into a tank of electric eels while attempting to fix a loose cable.

“Like the idea that eel goes in his mouth and instead of burrowing, you see it glow within him,” Feige wrote. On the scene where an electrocuted Max wakes up in the morgue, Feige added, “Kind of like the morgue, but hate the dancing mortician – cliché.”

Besides recommending the idea of visually setting up the power plant from which Electro draws his power in the climax of the film, Feige also offered commentary on the film’s supporting villain: Russian mobster Aleksei Sytsevich (Paul Giamatti), a.k.a. the rampaging Rhino.

“Tone down Paul Giamatti performance, so he seems a bit more menacing and less cartoonish,” Feige suggested.

Foxx’s portrayal of Electro in Amazing Spider-Man 2 previously drew comparisons to Jim Carrey’s Riddler in Batman Forever, which depicts the character as an obsessive and scorned employee turned costumed criminal.

It’s not clear if Foxx will portray a new version of the character, who appeared to die at the end of Amazing Spider-Man 2, or if his return is made possible by Marvel’s emphasis on the multiverse in the MCU’s Phase 4. Far From Home saw J.K. Simmons, who portrayed J. Jonah Jameson in the Sam Raimi-directed Spider-Man trilogy, return as a rebooted version of the character newly re-imagined as an online pundit.

Sony and Marvel’s Spider-Man 3 opens in theaters on December 17, 2021.