The past few days have seen a distinct uptick in rumors about the cast of Tom Holland’s third Spider-Man film, which is due to start shooting in the coming weeks. According to a lot of unsubstantiated tweets and a few unconfirmed reports, the two previous live-action Spider-Men — Tobey Maguire from three Sam Raimi Spider-Mans and Andrew Garfield from two Amazing Spider-Mans — will both reprise their roles in the film, creating a sort of live-action version of the popular Into the Spider-Verse animated film. The rumors make a certain amount of sense given other reports in recent weeks that the villain of the film will be Electro, who appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 opposite Garfield, and that Doctor Strange, a hero capable of bridging parallel dimension, is also supposedly appearing in the film.

Still three Spider-Men for the price of one sounds a little far-fetched, and thus far Sony has not verified the information (nor have any other trades picked up the story). Today, ET Canada got a comment from a spokesperson from Sony that reads: “Those rumoured castings are not confirmed,” They are hasty to note “the statement does not deny the casting buzz,” only that it is not definite at this time.

Could it still happen? It’s possible. Two big reasons suggest it won’t. One, it’s expensive enough making a Spider-Man with one Spider-Man; making one with three Spider-Man sounds especially cost prohibitive. Plus, if you make Spider-Man 3 into a Spider-Verse movie, you’ve basically cut the legs out from under Spider-Verse 2 — where appearances from animated versions of Maguire’s and Garfield’s characters would make a lot more sense (and probably cost a lot less money). Either way, we should know more when Spider-Man 3 officially starts shooting; the movie is currently scheduled for release on December 17, 2021.

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