Spider-Man: Brand New Day largely revolved around Peter Parker and Jean Grey, but writer Chris McKenna has now revealed several wildly different versions of the movie were considered during its development.
From disguising himself with a hilariously bad British accent while reconnecting with MJ to becoming a badass Spider-Man in Southeast Asia, Peter's journey looked much different.
At one point, the story even revolved around an imposter using his name and web fluid, forcing the real wall-crawler to turn to Matt Murdock for legal help. And if that isn't strange enough, another version introduced Spider-Cat and a Spider-Totem mystery.
In the version of Spider-Man: Brand New Day we saw, Peter and MJ reunite after he follows Ned back to their apartment and introduces himself as "Maynard." When Jean Grey finds the letter the hero wrote to her in Spider-Man: No Way Home, she's put in danger.
However, in an earlier draft, Spider-Man ran into MJ and was forced to disguise his voice with a bad British accent. Talking to The Bulwark, McKenna explained, "He had to have a persona. So it would be Peter from Queens pretending he's British because he was trying to disguise his voice. Tom Holland doing an American version of a British accent."
"He was juggling personas. He has to fall in with her to get in with this mystery, and he's pretending he's someone else: Ben Reilly," the writer added. "But he's Ben Reilly, British."
An even wilder version of the plot revealed that Peter had left New York and become "a badass hero in Southeast Asia, taking down Southeast Asian gangs." He'd have been living in a boat, but was set to be drawn back to the Big Apple upon learning of an imposter Spider-Man.
McKenna reveals, "He has to go all the way back to New York to deal with this imposter. Like, who is this guy? He gets there, and he finds out, like, this guy is using my web fluid and he's using my suit. And it turns out the guy has done what Peter Parker had never done, where he actually copyrighted the Spider-Man brand, like trademarked it."
"Then [Peter] had to hire Matt Murdock as a lawyer to help him fight because he got a cease-and-desist from this other guy. You can't pretend that you're Spider-Man. And so it became this whole thing that was pretty fun, but it was just a different story."
One particularly wild version of the movie had Peter meet Spider-Cat in a dream sequence that saw him tasked with tracking down a Spider-Totem:
"You're alone, you're an adult, you don't have anybody. Like, you get sick, you get to the hospital, and you don't have anyone on your emergency contact list. He gets injured in a fight. He gets hit in a way that he doesn't understand why he's in so much pain. He goes down to the pharmacy, and he's kind of out of it, and he's in pain, and he's looking for morphine. And then he hears a voice saying, 'Peter Parker.'"
"And he follows this voice around a corner. And he looks down, and it's the bodega cat. What is going on? He's like, 'Peter, you were part of a bigger story. You are not alone. I know you feel alone, but there's a whole community of beings out here that know what you're going through and are watching after you. There's an item that you must find. It is called the Spider Totem.' And then we start going into the whole Spider Totem story."
It's fascinating to see just how different Spider-Man: Brand New Day could have been before the filmmakers decided on the story that made it to the screen. The fact that Daredevil was considered is bound to renew hopes that he and Spidey could meet in the next movie.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now playing in theaters.
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Chris McKenna on co-writing the highest-grossing film, domestically, in history.
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