Tom Holland Confirms SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY Almost Unleashed Man-Spider Nightmare Sequences
One of the more interesting elements in Spider-Man: Brand New Day is seeing Peter Parker pushed to his physical and emotional limits as his Spider DNA starts turning against him.
Director Destin Daniel Cretton leaned into the unsettling side of Spider-Man mythology, pulling inspiration from comics, video games, animation, and even the fan-favorite Spider-Man: The Animated Series. But it turns out the movie almost went much further down that road.
Fans had been speculating for a long time that Brand New Day would borrow heavily from the "Neogenic Nightmare" storyline from Season 2 of the classic '90s animated series, where Peter's mutation spirals completely out of control, eventually transforming him into the terrifying Man-Spider.
While the finished film hints at those ideas through Peter's worsening condition, it stops well short of embracing the full body horror concept.
As it turns out, that wasn't always the plan. During an interview with Tom Holland and Josh Horowitz, Holland revealed that the creative team seriously explored some much creepier ideas before deciding they were a little too intense for the family audience Marvel wanted to reach.
“At one point, I was like, ‘What if he had like fangs that come out of his hands and he had like venom spikes?’ That is not in the movie, don’t worry.
“We explored the nightmare sequences of him waking up as the Man-Spider, and very quickly we were like, ‘We do want children to enjoy this movie as well as adults. You know, this is a little bit too creepy.‘”
It's easy to understand why Cretton and Marvel Studios ultimately chose to keep Peter's struggle more psychological than physical.
In Brand New Day, his deteriorating condition works as a reflection of the crushing isolation he's dealing with, and that emotional angle lands without needing to show him turning into a full-blown monster.
Still... I kind of wish they'd gone for it. The Man-Spider storyline from Spider-Man: The Animated Series is one of the most memorable arcs in the show's entire run, and seeing Holland battle horrifying nightmare visions of that creature could've been incredibly fun.
It also would've been an awesome way to pay tribute to one of the most beloved chapters in Spider-Man animation. And honestly, I think kids could've handled it.
Marvel has already ventured into some surprisingly creepy territory over the years. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness featured some genuinely unsettling imagery, and younger audiences survived just fine. A few nightmare sequences featuring Man-Spider don't feel like they would've crossed some impossible line.
Maybe we'll eventually get to see some of those abandoned concepts in concept art or deleted storyboards. I'd love to see what those nightmare sequences actually looked like because the idea of Holland waking up as the monstrous Man-Spider sounds like the kind of comic book insanity I'd happily watch.
Even without those scenes, Spider-Man: Brand New Day still delivers one of the darker chapters of Holland's Spider-Man story. But knowing the filmmakers almost leaned into the full Neogenic Nightmare experience makes it even more fascinating to imagine what could've been.