Josh Hutcherson Confirms Whether He'd Still Play Spider-Man After Losing The Role
Thanks to "Five Nights at Freddy's" and a bizarre TikTok trend that turns "Whistle" into the new Rickroll, Josh Hutcherson is back in the spotlight, and he's towing his greatest "what if" right alongside him.
In 2012, the young actor rebranded himself as a Hollywood powerhouse with Lionsgate's "Hunger Games" franchise, a booking that kept him busy for four films in as many years. However, just before that journey began, he screen-tested for the title role of Peter Parker in Sony's "The Amazing Spider-Man" with a fully choreographed fight scene that can still be found online. The footage is fun and shows off what fans could've seen had Andrew Garfield not won the role. Over a decade later, Hutcherson is still interested in playing the famous wall-crawler.
During an interview with Inverse, he reaffirmed his devotion to Spidey when asked if he'd be interested in portraying a variant of the hero. "Potentially, yeah," he admitted. "I was a big Spider-Man fan all my life growing up from the old-school cartoons and stuff. But yeah, I'd be open to it, man. I'd throw some webs around." Both Marvel and Sony are heavily invested in the Multiverse angle, a convenient narrative hook that allows multiple versions of the same character to exist in the same space, so it's not an impossibility. It's not even unlikely, given how more than 600 Spider-People appeared in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse." But that's Sony, and Marvel might be less keen on the Multiverse moving forward.
What is the future of Marvel's multiverse?
The Marvel Cinematic Universe doesn't have many connective threads these days. With most projects introducing new characters to replenish the roster that either died or retired in "Avengers: Endgame," the multiverse is the franchise's only consistent theme. "Spider-Man: No Way Home," "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania," "What If...?," and "Loki," all of which came out in the last few years, center the concept of multiple realities colliding to the detriment of their denizens. Seeing as Phases 4, 5, and 6 of the MCU are labeled "The Multiverse Saga," Marvel nailed the branding.
But Marvel built its multiverse around a singular actor portraying several antagonists, and that actor is no longer working with the studio. Will Marvel recast Kang or replace him as the Big Bad? No one knows, but "Loki" offered Marvel a quiet way out of "The Multiverse Saga," should it prove necessary. The ending of "Loki" Season 2 finale sees the god of mischief (Tom Hiddleston) single-handedly brings peace to the multiverse by creating Yggdrasil. Technically speaking, Marvel could pretend that Loki's sacrifice also stopped Kang's multiversal conquest.
It's too soon to tell, especially considering how many upcoming projects are already set to feature the multiverse, but Marvel might be seeking a new shtick. New Spider-Man variants are unlikely to make the cut if that's the case. But there's always hope as long as Josh Hutcherson keeps his chin up.