Asa Butterfield Might Be Marvel's New Spider-Man
April 30th, 2015
It’s been a crazy few years for Spider-Man fans. Back in 2010, Sony scrapped plans for a Spider-Man 4 from Sam Raimi in favor of The Amazing Spider-Man reboot from Marc Webb. Then, before The Amazing Spider-Man 2 hit last year, Sony announced plans to build a big shared Spiderverse with a Sinister Six film, a Venom film, a superheroine team-up film, and more. But bad reviews and disappointing box office for ASM2 (the worst of any Spider-Man movie ever) ended up tanking all those plans, which prompted Sony to team up with Marvel in rebooting the character yet again, this time as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Spider-Man will now appear in the next Marvel movie to go into production – Captain America: Civil War – as well as his own standalone film, to be co-produced by Marvel and Sony. And seeing as Civil War is gearing up to start production next month, it’s only a matter of time before they announce who’s playing the new Peter Parker.
While The Wrap previously reported that Marvel was looking at five names for the role –
Nat Wolff (The Fault in Our Stars),
Liam James (The Killing),
Asa Butterfield (Ender’s Game),
Tom Holland (In the Heart of the Sea), and Timothee Chalamet (Interstellar) – Latino Review is now claiming that it’s Butterfield’s role to lose. According to one of LR‘s sources, Butterfield may have even already “bagged the role.”
I don’t have particularly strong feelings about this, though he’s probably my first choice of the five on the shortlist. Obviously, the most important thing here is that Marvel casts a good actor, and Butterfield has proven several times over that he’s more than capable in that regard.
Having said that, I do wonder how funny he can be. Butterfield could absolutely handle the emotional core required of Peter Parker – the constant guilt, the fear of collateral damage, the awkward nerd stuff – but how impressive is his quip game? Can he pull off Spider-Man’s patented rapid-fire jokes? I haven’t seen every movie he’s ever been in, but as far as I’m aware, he’s pretty much only played it serious.
Of course, that doesn’t mean he couldn’t play funny, it’s just not the first thing that pops into my head when I think of the guy. Otherwise, he fits the age range that Marvel wants for the character (he’s 18, but he could easily play 15-16) and more or less looks the part.
What do you think? Do you like him for the role? Or would you prefer to see somebody else in the red and blue tights?
Captain America: Civil War opens in theaters May 6th, 2016, while the standalone Spider-Man film opens on July 28th, 2017.
