The MCU’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now just around the corner, but a strange new revelation has cast focus back to the start of Tom Holland’s first Spider-Man trilogy. 9 years later, Spider-Man: Homecoming remains one of the strongest first solo movies for any MCU character, and really cemented Holland’s reception as the perfect new Spider-Man after his brief turn in Captain America: Civil War had introduced him to fans. It helped that the cast also included Michael Keaton, who played Adrian Toomes AKA the Vulture with a double-sided brilliance that made him both an incredibly menacing villain and a surprisingly sympathetic figure. But had Kevin Feige had his way, Keaton wouldn’t have made that role so great, because another far more surprising actor was offered the role first.
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Almost a decade after Holland’s first solo Spider-Man movie in the MCU, the surprise star who was offered the role of Vulture before Michael Keaton was cast has been revealed. Speaking to Josh Horowitz, Hamilton star Lin-Manuel Miranda has revealed that Kevin Feige offered him the role on a call, and despite loving the franchise, he was forced to turn it down. Horowitz brought up comments from Miranda that he’d turned down an MCU role in the past, and worked out that he must have been talking about Spider-Man: Homecoming. Naturally, he asked if Miranda had been in line to play Martin Starr’s science teacher, Mr Harrington, to which his guest laughed and said he would have been “deeply miscast” and revealed the role was Vulture:
“It was Vulture, and Kevin Feige told me the entire plot over the phone. And, uh, I was like, “Oh.” And then they get to the door, and it’s her dad, and I went, “Oh!” on the phone… I was really the canary in the coal mine. And I said, “When does it shoot?” And he goes, “Basically, the moment you step off stage in Hamilton.” And I went, “Well, I would really like to—I love these movies, but I would really like to stay married, so, I cannot do this. And I mean, god, that would have been terrible… Michael Keaton was perfect. Like, they found exactly who they needed.”
Lin-Manuel Miranda Nails Why He Shouldn’t Have Been Cast as Vulture
While he’s an excellent actor and musician, the idea of Miranda playing Vulture is a bit of a head-scratcher. There’s nothing in his previous, most prominent roles – as Jack in Mary Poppins Returns or as Alexander Hamilton – that really suggests he has the necessary menace within him. Marvel movies have cast against type before, of course, but villains do tend to require the right sort of presence. That said, Miranda would fit the bracket of classical theatrical actors who have played villains, so maybe it wouldn’t have been as disastrous as the man himself seems to believe.
When Horowitz countered that Miranda’s Vulture could have been great in a different way, and cited the car scene in which Toomes confronts Peter Parker about his secret identity as Spider-Man, the actor doubled down: “It would have been… And I’m very glad, because, you know, Michael Keaton – that was perfect. I have no regrets. I needed a vacation so badly. So, it was uh, not life, right? And I think I would have been deeply miscast in it.” He also revealed to Horowitz that Kevin Feige later told him that his reaction to the reveal that Vulture was the father of Peter’s girlfriend on the call convinced the Marvel supremo that the movie was going to work.
For trivia fans, Miranda now joins the confirmed list of actors who turned down an MCU role. For a long time, his Mary Poppins Returns costar Emily Blunt has been the most notorious after she was forced to pass on Black Widow, but there are lots of others. Mel Gibson turned down Odin, Russell Crowe turned down Wolverine, Joaquin Phoenix passed on Doctor Strange, and Jason Momoa was in line to play Drax the Destroyer. On the villainous side, Matthew McConaughey reportedly came close to playing Ego in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 before Kurt Russell was cast, John Leguizamo was also in talks to play Vulture but also pulled out before Michael Keaton signed on, and Alec Baldwin has revealed he turned down an unnamed villain part in the MCU. All huge names, but each would have made for very different versions of the heroes and villains we’ve come to love.
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