Skip to main content

Spider-Man reboot will center on Peter Parker as a high school superhero

Spider-Man reboot will center on Peter Parker as a high school superhero

Share this story

It's official: the new Spider-Man will be Peter Parker — not his successor in the comic books, Miles Morales, or anyone else who has donned the Spider-Man mask over the years. And the reboot (number three, if you're keeping count) will focus far more than ever before on Parker's experiences in high school. That's all according to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, who, after the surprise Sony-Marvel deal earlier this year, is now helping to oversee the creative direction of the Spider-Man films.

In an interview with Collider, Feige explains the decision to keep Parker in high school: "Some of my favorite Spider-Man arcs and Spider-Man stories — he’s in high school for a lot of it. We want to explore that. That also makes him very, very different from any of our other characters in the [Marvel Cinematic Universe], which is something else we want to explore: how unique he is when now put against all these other characters."

"There are so many things from the comics that haven’t been done yet."

He added that a high school-aged Parker opens the doors to exploring storylines from the comics that have yet to be developed on the silver screen. "There are so many things from the comics that haven’t been done yet. Not just characters or villains or supporting characters, but sides to his character. The most obvious being the young, doesn’t quite fit in kid before his powers, and then the fella that puts on a mask and swings around and fights bad guys." The past two reboots have seen Parker graduate high school relatively quickly, leaving little time for exploring the dynamics of a superhero at that age.

The Marvel Studios executive says that Parker will like be 15 or 16 years old in the first film, which is set to come out on July 28th, 2017. Whatever age Parker is supposed to be, the next Spider-Man actor will most certainly be older — both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield played high school-aged versions of Parker despite being in their late 20s and early 30s during filming. That said, plans could certainly change since the film is in the very early stages. We're expected to get our first look at the new Spider-Man in next year's Captain America: Civil War.