Spider-Man: No Way Home nearly featured other “big characters” but the team decided against it apparently to help keep the story from straying too far away from Peter Parker/Spider-Man. Writer Chris McKenna was asked by The Wrap to share information about characters that “fell off the table,” and McKenna gave a very teasing answer.
“I don’t know if we’re allowed to honestly, but there were big characters. But almost too big,” McKenna said.
No Way Home brings together villains from previous Spider-Man movies, including Doc Ock (Alfred Molina), Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), and Electro (Jamie Foxx), among others. McKenna said even having this many characters was a challenge in some respects.
“It always became a balancing act of how do we tell not only a story with all these awesome villains that we know we want to bring into this movie, the classic ones, but also how do we make this still a Tom Holland/Peter Parker story so that he’s not completely overshadowed? Because at the end of the day, it’s not going to be a great Spider-Man movie if you’re not telling an emotional Peter Parker story,” McKenna said. “We had these riches that we had to … This giant idea [with] all these great actors, but also we had to tell a story that felt like we were telling a personal story for our main character.”
The full interview contains many more fascinating insights into No Way Home, so be sure to read the full thing.
No Way Home has made more than $1.5 billion worldwide at the box office and now ranks as the 8th biggest movie in the history of cinema. It is expected to finally be knocked off its No. 1 perch at the box office this weekend when the new Scream movie opens.