20 facts you might not know about 'Spider-Man: No Way Home'

When they were making the first of the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies, they had big plans. Apparently, they weren’t worried about Spidey fatigue, even though we had already had five movies featuring the character in the previous two decades. This sequel was planned while Spider-Man: Homecoming was still in production.

Holland’s Spider-Man is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, these movies are not made by Marvel and Disney, who owns Marvel. Instead, they are Sony movies, and Spider-Man is in the MCU because of a deal between the two companies. That deal fell apart in August 2019, and it seemed Spider-Man was going to be out of the MCU. This, naturally, didn’t sit well with fans. Eventually, the two sides reconciled, keeping Holland’s Peter Parker in the MCU.

We know that No Way Home was quite ambitious in terms of scope and scale. Initially, it wasn’t going to be a story that brought back villains from Spider-Man’s past across the franchises. Instead, screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers thought Kraven the Hunter would be the main villain. In the end, he wasn’t in the movie at all.

Once McKenna and Sommers moved beyond their initial Kraven ideal, they stumbled on a different story style. They found inspiration in the holiday staple It’s a Wonderful Life. That movie is about a man who wishes he was never born and then saw what life would be like if that were true. The hook for No Way Home became Peter wishing that nobody knew he was Spider-Man.

We get at least one Spider-Man villain from all five Spidey movies before the Holland series. Oh, not to mention that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield return as Peter Parkers from alternate universes. That’s a lot, but it could have been even more. In the early drafts, McKenna and Sommers included every major character from previous Spider-Man films they could but realized they had bitten off more than they could chew.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 did not really click with audiences, so people may not have revisited Jamie Foxx’s turn as Electro in a while. If they haven’t, they might not realize his look changed for No Way Home. Instead of the blue design in the first film, inspired by the “Ultimate Marvel” run, Electro had a yellower look, which is the most recognizable design for the character from the comics.

It’s been a while since Molina played Doc Ock, so he was digitally de-aged for this movie. The same was true for Willem Dafoe, who returned as Norman Osborn and Green Goblin. On top of that, this was likely a breeze for Molina compared to Spider-Man 2. His tentacles were completely CGI, whereas, in his first appearance, CGI was mixed with puppetry.

Not everybody watches every single Marvel project. Even if you are really into the MCU, that doesn’t include the Marvel shows from Netflix. Well, we should say it didn’t. You may not have recognized him, but Charlie Cox was reprising his role as Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil, in a one-scene role in this movie. Soon after, Vincent D’Onofrio was ported over from the Netflix shows as Kingpin on Hawkeye.

Morgan, the daughter of Tony Stark and Pepper Potts, was going to appear in the movie. Lexi Rabe, who played Morgan in Endgame, even filmed scenes. However, they were cut from the film before its release. Holland’s brother, Harry, also briefly appeared as a drug dealer cut from the movie. Hey, at least Tom was able to get his brother a role as a drug dealer in his film Cherry.

Originally, No Way Home would come out after Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. That meant it could follow everything that happens in that movie. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, things changed, and suddenly, No Way Home was going to be coming out first. That meant the script had to be rewritten not to include anything revealed in the Doctor Strange sequel. In fact, after the credits of this movie, we got the debut of the Multiverse of Madness trailer.

Cumberbatch’s Dr. Strange plays a key role in No Way Home, and we’re sure he did the due diligence of learning his lines. However, that may be all he got around to reading. Cumberbatch has said he didn’t read the full script because he wanted to be surprised by the story.

Huge movies like this always have working titles for productions to try and throw fans off the scent. That was even more necessary for a movie like this, trying to keep the appearances of different characters secret. Shooting in New York didn’t help matters on that front. For No Way Home, the obfuscating working title was “Serenity Now.” This is, of course, a catchphrase from Seinfeld.

Holland is an in-demand actor. He’s also apparently got plenty of energy. Holland started shooting No Way Home only two days after finishing shooting Uncharted.

While speculation ran rampant, the fact Maguire and Garfield were appearing in the movie was technically kept from being leaked before the movie came out. Both actors had quite a bit of say in their characterizations. McKenna and Sommers spoke to them about what they wanted to be included in the script to help flesh out the characters. Maguire, for his part, wanted as few details revealed about what his Peter Parker had been up to as possible.

MJ works at Peter Pan Donut & Pastry Shop in the film. This is a real place in Brooklyn. While the movie shot some exteriors and things of that nature in New York, they did not film these scenes at the actual bakery. Instead, they took photos and then built a complete reproduction of the inside of the building on a set in Atlanta.

If we told you that Dafoe wore prosthetic teeth in No Way Home, that might not surprise you. After all, this is a way to differentiate his Norman Osborn and Green Goblin personas. However, Dafoe wears fake teeth when he’s playing Norman. As the villainous Green Goblin, his teeth are all-natural, baby.

In the film, you can see multiple examples of graffiti that simply reads “Ditko.” This is in honor of Marvel artist and writer Steve Ditko. It’s Ditko who, along with Stan Lee, created both Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. As such, this is the perfect film to give him a shout-out in.

Apparently, people were really jonesing for No Way Home. When the first trailer dropped, it was watched 355.5 million times within the first 24 hours. This was a new record for trailer views in that time frame.

COVID-19 has put a huge dent in the box office. It’s been hard for movies to make much money, and No Way Home came out as the omicron variant started to rise. None of this got in the way of Spider-Man dominating the film world. It has made over $1.5 billion, making it the first movie to make over a billion dollars worldwide since The Rise of Skywalker. No Way Home is one of the top 10 highest-grossing movies ever, and it’s the highest-grossing film Sony has ever put out.

Look, when you pull in over $1.5 billion during a pandemic, there will be a sequel. Plans for a fourth Spider-Man movie are already in the works. That said, Tom Holland has had some thoughts on his future. He no longer is under contract and has both expressed interest in doing a different kind of Spider-Man movie telling a new story but has said that if he is still playing Peter Parker in his thirties, he will have “done something wrong.” Hey, now that Maguire has returned to the role for this movie, Holland wouldn’t be the first person to do four Spider-Man movies.