Poor Spider-Man. Not only does he have supervillains and occasionally J.K. Simmons to contend with (that guy is very intimidating), but he’s forced to go back to high school every few years. And where most of us get to wake up in a cold sweat after experiencing the trauma of being bullied over and over again, thanks to the shell game of reboots and character rights Peter Parker has to just suck it up and wait for that radioactive spider to bite him, again.
Now Sony is reshuffling Spider-Man’s status once more, a move that will result not only in the character’s official induction into the Marvel Cinematic Universe but also a new solo movie due in 2017. This new movie and its implied sequels are being referred to as a “new creative direction” for the character, which apparently is movie-executive slang for “we’re just going to do the origin story again.” Variety reports that the character is being sent back to high school for the upcoming series of Spider-films, the difference this time being that “the plan is to spend more time in the [Midtown High School] setting and explore his awkward relationship with other students while fighting crime out of the classroom.”
Sony is also looking for a new Spider-Man for its new films. Variety hints at the possibility of Peter Parker being discarded in favor of Miles Morales—the half-black, half-Puerto Rican incarnation of the character introduced in Ultimate Fallout #4—a prospect guaranteed to whip the pro-Donald Glover crowd into a hashtagging frenzy (not that they need any help). Variety also mentions Teen Wolf’s Dylan O’Brien and Percy Jackson & The Olympians’ Logan Lerman as candidates for the role, both of whom merit a half-hearted Facebook comment at best.