Spider-Man: No Way Home Originally Had a Civil War Cover Story

While we don’t know if the revelatory-in-hindsight 2020 trade reports were the result of escaped intelligence or intentional disclosures, Holland, along with the primary No Way Home cast, was clearly privy to Sony’s ambitious early plan of maintaining long-term secrecy over the film’s treasure trove of secrets. Of course, as he states, such a task would be impossible, especially today with the leak-facilitating platform of the Internet now magnified exponentially by social media. Indeed, set photos would have surfaced of returning actors like Molina, Foxx, and Green Goblin-reprising Spider-Man star Willem Dafoe in full costume, complementing an inevitable variety of unsourced s of their roles. After all, even many of the secrets—and, rest assured, I won’t dare say which ones—that Sony continue to keep covered have ultimately been validated.

Yet, the false scenario remains intriguing when thinking about the potential level of audience interest for a cover plot primarily pitting Spider-Man against Spidey’s side of the MCU as a whole—in any meaningful manner. Sure, No Way Home would have provided plenty of footage to foster the ruse, but the scenario, which Holland himself calls a “civil war” between the heroes, sounds like a retread of something we’ve already seen, notably in the aforementioned Civil War, in which Holland’s Spidey made his monumental MCU-adherent debut. Thus, such a strategy might have become detrimental to the film’s buildup, which would have paled in comparison to its current, potentially record-breaking pandemic-era momentum.

Nevertheless, Holland’s revelation does leave one to wonder if Sony could have actually pulled off a secrets-keeping campaign of such an enormous magnitude for such an intrinsically porous project. After all, the successful keeping of said secret would have facilitated a moment that would have undoubtedly become one of the biggest, most iconic applause moments in the immortal annals of cinema. However, said moment would have come with an enormous opportunity cost of squandering months of valuable PR pitching a plot to the public that, frankly, just doesn’t sound exciting enough to warrant No Way Home’s actual enormity. Thus, regardless of the film’s final tally, the more prudent strategy was taken.

Spider-Man: No Way Home hits theaters on Friday, Dec. 17.