Spider-Man: Brand New Day saw the web-slinger battle Jean Grey, The Hulk, and Scorpion, but Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures considered several other antagonists before choosing them.
We know Chameleon was a possibility before Sony decided to move forward with its ill-fated Kraven the Hunter movie. Now, in an interview with The Bulwark, co-writer Chris McKenna detailed some amazing-sounding plans for Kraven in the fourth MCU Spider-Man movie.
That version of Brand New Day had Kraven turn New York City "into a Home Alone trap for Spider-Man, where he set up booby traps everywhere."
McKenna explained, "He's hunting down Peter Parker, and he could even be a tertiary villain. He could be hired by someone and... someone who's stalking him the entire movie."
While Kraven didn't make the cut, Boomerang did show up in a single scene. Some fans were disappointed by Fred Myers' minor role given that he was a pretty significant supporting character in Nick Spencer's Amazing Spider-Man run. There were once bigger plans for him, though.
"[Peter] goes back to his apartment. He had missed his rent and gets thrown out. He has to move in with two guys down the hallway who are like these two nice guys who he's met before," McKenna recalled. "One of them is Australian, and then it turns out that they're villains. One of them's Overkill, and the other one is Boomerang. He finds himself a roommate of two villains."
When the decision was made to use a villain with psychic powers, Jean Grey wasn't initially a possibility. Shadow King, however, was, despite having no real history with Spider-Man on the page.
"We started thinking, 'What if it was Shadow King from the comics, who's a really, really cool villain, who is a telepath that first gets discovered by Charles Xavier, and he runs into him in Egypt. You didn't even see this character because all our Shadow King is trying to do is find his body. And that was the story. He was trying to find his body. His body basically had been taken from him and hidden somewhere in New York City a long time ago by people who recognised that this guy was really dangerous."
"Everyone started realising, 'Well, this isn't very satisfying because just having a disembodied voice the entire time and not having a face-to-face villain, you hit a wall at a certain point and you can't explore who the character is.' So much of Spider-Man's stories are so great because of his connection with the villain and his telling."
Ultimately, all of these ideas were obviously left on the cutting-room floor, but McKenna's comments offer an intriguing look at just how different Spider-Man: Brand New Day could have been.
A Kraven story would have been amazing, but the odds of seeing that villain battle Spider-Man in the near future are surely very slim given that 2024's Kraven the Hunter was a critical and commercial flop. Still, who knows what surprises Spider-Man 5 will bring.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now playing in theaters.
Breaking Down ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ With Its Co-writer by The Bulwark
Chris McKenna on co-writing the highest-grossing film, domestically, in history.
Read on Substack