In the latest apparent example of just how detrimental Hollywood’s constant desire for marketing synergy can be to their products, a new rumor suggests that Sony’s upcoming Madame Web had to undergo massive reshoots in order to fix a number of plotholes and continuity errors that arose in its plot after its studio handlers attempted to directly tie the Spider-Man spin-off to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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This whisper was first dished out to the digital streets courtesy of veteran Hollywood industry reporter and the eponymous founder of The InSneider entertainment news outlet Jeff Sneider via the January 19th episode of his and film critic John Rocha’s The Hot Mic podcast.
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Addressing the discrepancy between the Dakota Johnson-led film’s position as a canon prequel to Sony’s ongoing Spider-Man-Without-Spider-Man film universe – which at current is only confirmed to also contain both Venom outings, Morbius, and Kraven the Hunter – and the fact that it’s supposed version of Uncle Ben, as portrayed by Severance star Adam Scott, looks far too young to have a super-hero-aged nephew, the scooper asserted to his co-host, “I was always under the impression that Madame Web was set in the 90s. That’s what I thought we were told.”
To this end, Sneider explained that thanks to the film being set just a few decades in the past, the film’s production team “thought for some reason that Andrew Garfield was going to be Spider-Man in that world.”
“Not that he was going to be in the movie,” he clarified, “but like, maybe this is for sequels or whatever. But for whatever reason, Andrew Garfield was supposed to be the Spider-Man in that world.”
However, while the existence of Garfield as Sony’s ‘current’ incarnation of the web-slinger aligned with the film’s 90s setting, everything went to crap when “afterwards it was decided it was gonna be Tom Holland’s Spider-Man,” as this change meant that “the timeline didn’t line-up anymore.”
As such, Sneider then revealed, “I heard that the reshoots for Madame Web, the latest reshoots – which I thought they were up to something else – but I’m told the reshoots were actually to remove all the 90s reference from the movie because someone f–ked up on doing the math as far as like, ‘Tom Holland’s age would actually be this’, or whatever it was.”
“So, I would just say that when Madame Web comes out, don’t expect any 90s references,” he ultimately asserted. “They got rid of the 90s setting because that made sense when it was Andrew Garfield Spider-Man, but not for Tom Holland’s Spider-Man.”
“That’s what the reshoots are for, like to address, whether it’s costumes, or style of phone they flip out, I don’t f–ing know [exactly],” Sneider ultimately concluded of his scoop. “I was told it was a real ‘someone f–ked up’ like, up high in terms of the timeline and the math, and it was just a simple matter of f–ked up math”.
It should be noted that despite all of his indications to the fact, Sneider did not specifically confirm whether or not Madame Web will indeed feature Holland’s Peter Parker as its resident wall-crawler or, in light of this timeline debacle, they will cut any webs connecting the film to a specific Spider-Man.
Ultimately, fans can find out just what direction Sony has chosen to go in when Madame Web leaps onto the big screen on February 14th.
