Tom Holland has revealed that delays to Doctor Strange 2 meant that Spider-Man: No Way Home had to be rewritten. When Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe was announced, they initially planned on releasing the Doctor Strange sequel before No Way Home.
Unfortunately, changes in director and the Covid-19 pandemic meant things had to change. This led to No Way Home’s production becoming a little muddled with the script being rewritten during filming. You could ask the director, ‘What happens in act three?’ And his response would be, ‘I’m still trying to figure it out,'” Tom Holland told GQ.
Eventually, it got to the point where Holland felt he had to step in and speak to director Jon Watts. “I kept stopping and being like, ‘I’m so sorry, I just don’t believe what I’m saying,'” he explained. “It wasn’t me. The scene was wrong. We sat down, we went through it, and we came up with a new idea. Then we pitched it to the writers, they rewrote it, and it works great.”
While the idea of rewriting a film on the go may sound shocking it’s actually surprisingly common. Let’s not forget that Marvel plans its action movies out far in advance with each movie impacting the overall arc of the phase. if just one thing changes then the whole stack of dominoes need to be re-stacked.
Marvel recently made the decision to delay a number of its Phase 4 movies next year. While it may sound like the sky is falling Kevin Feige’s played down the doomsayers.
“If the run we had in 2018 and 2019 had gotten disrupted this way, in the buildup to [Avengers: Endgame], it would have been a bigger headache, he told The New York Times. “with these projects it worked well.”
Spider-Man: No Way Home is released in theatres on December 15.