Yesterday Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures dropped a Hulk-sized bomb on comic book fans everywhere yesterday: Spider-Man is going to become a part of the same cinematic universe as Marvel’s Avengers. That means you may see Spider-Man teaming up with Captain America and Iron Man on the silver screen sometime in the very near future.
Previously this was impossible for legal reasons. Despite being created my Marvel Comics, Sony Pictures owned the exclusive movie rights to Spider-Man. For years, Marvel has been trying to buy back the movie rights to their most iconic creation, but Sony was holding onto the rights to the character with strength of an irradiated spider.
However, after the last two Sony superhero films, The Amazing Spider-Man” and its sequel, both performed poorly at the box office, Sony seemed desperate to put some life back into their web-slinging property. And so they finally teamed up with Marvel Studios, which has had a string of enormous money making hits (The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy etc).
The new deal leaves the movie rights with Sony but allows Spider-Man to appears in Marvel Studio films (with his first such appearance likely to be in the next Captain America movie, subtitled “Civil War”).
Sources have reported that Sony is planning to completely reboot the character yet again. Which means that Andrew Garfield, who portrayed Spider-Man’s alter ego Peter Parker in both “Amazing” films, is out.
This, at last, brings us to Indonesian action hero Iko Uwais, star of “The Raid” and its ridiculously awesome sequel. Ethan Aderton, a writer for popular film news site Firstshowing.net, wrote an article titled “Here Are 7 Actors to Consider for Marvel & Sony’s New Spider-Man.” His list includes some buzzed about Hollywood up-and-comers including Dylan O’Brien (The Maze Runner) and Anton Yelchin (Star Trek), but his most surprising candidate for the Spider-Man costume was Iko:
Despite being nothing more than one writer’s far-fetched fantasy pick, Aderton’s article excited some in the Indonesian media. Vivanews actually met Iko today and asked him what he thought of being cast as the iconic superhero.
“Seriously? I just heard about it for the first time right now. I personally don’t follow Spider-Man that much and I’ve never imagined myself as a superhero like that, ” Iko said, as quoted by Vivanews.
In his typically modest fashion, Iko added, “There are a lot of people better for that. My acting is also not much compared to others.”
The idea of Iko playing Peter Parker may seem unlikely, but Marvel has done some unlikely things with Spider-Man, at least in the comic book world. For example, the Spider-Man of Marvel’s highly popular “Ultimate Comics” line is not Peter Parker, but Miles Morales, a half-Black half-Hispanic teenager who picked up the mantle after Peter Parker’s death.
At any rate Iko is already appearing in what is likely to be the biggest film of this year, Star Wars Episode VII. Which is being produced by Disney, which also owns Marvel. So there is a connection there, too.
But to be honest, Iko probably wouldn’t be the best pick for Spider-Man. However, if anybody with any relation to Marvel Studios is reading this, we humbly suggest that Iko Uwais has to become one of your superheroes. If you’ll permit us to nerd out for a moment, Uwais might be a perfect fit for one of Marvel’s martial arts based superheroes such as Iron Fist and/or Shang Chi (who is known as the Master of Kung-Fu, but since nobody knows much about him could easily become the Master of Pencak Silat).
