A relative unknown at the time, Andrew Garfield was cast as Peter Parker in 2012's The Amazing Spider-Man when Sony Pictures decided to move on from Tobey Maguire and filmmaker Sam Raimi.
Fans were promised "The Untold Story," but the studio got cold feet and left some sweeping changes to Spidey's origin on the cutting room floor. Still, The Amazing Spider-Man spawned a sequel, but plans for third and fourth movies, along with Sinister Six, were scrapped when Sony teamed with Marvel Studios to bring the web-slinger into the MCU.
Tom Holland took over from Garfield when Captain America: Civil War was released in 2016, but the Amazing Spider-Man made his comeback in Spider-Man: No Way Home five years later. The hope now is that he'll return in Avengers: Secret Wars.
However, in another corner of the Multiverse, it's Five Nights at Freddy's star Josh Hutcherson playing Peter #3. During a recent interview with ET Online, the actor reflected on being in the mix to play The Amazing Spider-Man's lead and learning he hadn't got the part.
"A few months before I got cast in Hunger Games, I was in the running to be Spider-Man," he said on the Dinner's On Me podcast. "I got told 'no,' which, as a teenager, was heartbreaking because I obviously wanted to be Spider-Man. But then, I was cast in the Hunger Games. That was the craziest turn of events."
"Hunger Games came out of nowhere. It just changed everything," he added, admitting that after starring in the franchise's four movies—The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and the two-part Mockingjay sequels—alongside Jennifer Lawrence, work dried up.
"I didn’t learn rejection ever," Hutcherson noted. "I knew only success from the age 9 to, like, 24, then kind of post 'Hunger Games' world. Because 'Hunger Games' set things up. The industry is so goddamn tricky because they set you up in this way where they’re like, 'You’ve arrived. You now are working with Jennifer Lawrence and Philip Seymour Hoffman, and you’re in this movie that makes billions of dollars, you’re the second lead of the film.'"
Explaining that as "quickly as they’re excited to get you into the spotlight," the opportunities start to fade, he continued, "It was just like a string of no one calling, not getting any offers, auditioning, but not getting cast. It’s this whole thing of, 'Oh wow, I have my career that I’ve had since I was 9 years old. It’s always worked. I always got cast.'"
"Of course, there are things that you don’t get cast in, but I had only known that the chances are, if I was auditioning, was going to book it. That is just not the reality at all."
Hutcherson was a popular choice for Spider-Man in the early 2010s, but it's hard now to imagine anyone other than Garfield as that particular Peter Parker. As for Holland's wall-crawler, we'll see him when Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens in theaters on July 31, 2026.