Hey Amy. Hey Hello. What's going on?
Good to see you, too. Okay, let's talk. Let's still take a look back first of all. I'm just curious. When you look back at the course of these past four films, what feels like the biggest creative risk you guys took over that span?
Well, Kevin and I can look back on 27 years.
We could go back to that far if you want. I'm happy to.
And I think, but when we think of these movies, it was really important to have to put Spider-Man into the MCU because he's a character that exists amongst other characters. And that was on the one hand risky and on the other hand a no-brainer. And I think we've managed to keep Spider-Man on his own and also within a larger world. And I think we did that good.
I think we did good. You did good on that one. I'm going to say
I'm going to say you did good.
No, but you know, because you could have gotten all lost. But we didn't. It could have stunk.
The history of studios, different studios intermingling and figuring out that stuff, it just doesn't happen.
Well, it's a testament to Amy and to her love of Spider-Man.
No, and to you and your love of Spider-Man. It was because Kevin loves Spider-Man and I love Spider-Man so much that we both wanted to do the right thing for him. And we got our companies to agree.
You know, the other thing about a risk, which is weird to think about now, but
Recasting him so soon after Andrew was a bit of a risk.
Bringing him in 10 years ago through Civil War was our way to try to mitigate that risk. And then also taking three movies to tell an elongated version of Spidey's origin that Sam told in the first half of a movie, I think was also a risk in bringing in non-superhero supporting characters like Ned and MJ that play such a big part, which is what we wanted in his high school environment, and then sitting in your press conference today, Josh, with the three of them now titans of industry and much better spokesmen than we've ever been.
Well, it's also you reap the rewards of that risk that you just talked about because you've made another what could be considered a risk on this film, which is the Hollywood playbook is you go bigger, you go bigger, you keep escalating. And because those three actors are so phenomenal, because of what John and you guys, you went smaller.
Was there an iteration of this where you said like, let's try to go even bigger? Or was it always the mission statement?
Hard to get bigger than three Spider-Men.
Well, Amy does that in her animated movies with a hundred Spider-Men.
That's fair. Right. That's fair. But, you know, after you do a movie with three Spider-Men, which was a beautiful and generous reunion and generous experience for all of them, the point was really to concentrate on Peter. And going bigger now works.
Because you can forget help.
When you go to the so-called street level, a lot of characters were talked about. Was there ever, did you ever go down the road of Daredevil, Kingpin? From what Vincent has said, there are some rights issues on the Kingpin side.
Great. They're not. They're not. I mean, there are things to navigate like everything else, but we did. We talked about all those characters.
Yeah. And is that I mean, that's the thing with the Spider-Man pantheon is you have such an insane wealth to choose from on each one. And you would know as well as I do, it's like, from a fan perspective, it bumps me out a little bit that I've never seen Venom, Tom Hardy's Venom, and Tom's Spider-Man. And I'm sure, how close did you guys get to that actually happening along the way?
It would be great. Let's put it that way.
Yeah. Do you still have hope?
No, Charles, go home and cry about it.
But wait, there is an animated version in the works, yes?
Yes. There is. Okay. Okay. Fair enough. When you I kind of alluded to this because, you know, when I talked to you, Kevin, it's always like you were a fan first. You came at this from a fan. You still are a fan.
Can you talk a little bit more about the satisfaction of seeing Spider-Man and Punisher, Spider-Man and Hulk? It must make your geek heart very happy.
Yeah, it's surreal. There's a very brief moment in the movie where Spidey is perched on Hulk's back. And that's an image years ago, and certainly when we started, and Amy made the Sam Raimi movies, that I never thought would have been possible. Hulk was at one studio, Spidey was at another studio, we were our own studio. So there are moments like that, and I've been lucky enough for it to happen for a quarter of a century now. Yes, my inner nerd is very excited about what I'm watching.
Tom recently did the podcast with me, and we talked about the future, and Miles Morales always comes up. And he said to me that he already has in his brain how that torch is passed. Are you all in alignment of if and when you get there, how it goes down?
If and when we get there, we'll be aligned.
[laughter]
I mean, he has more of a creative seat at the table, obviously. It seems like this time, especially, he was there with you guys. I would say he was
He was. He was. He's Spider-Man, so he knows more about Spider-Man than anybody. And yes, of course we love Miles. We have a movie coming out next summer.
