One of the more popular conspiracy theories making the rounds during the buildup to Spider-Man: No Way Home was that Sony and Marvel Studios had no intention of bringing back Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, but were then forced to add them into the story when it became abundantly clear the fans wouldn’t accept anything less.
Of course, that won’t have been the case when the Marvel Cinematic Universe is planned out years in advance, and Tom Holland admitted that as soon as he was pitched the bare bones of what eventually became No Way Home, he didn’t think the creative team would be able to pull it off.
As we know now, they most certainly did, and a large part of the movie’s success is driven by the returns of Maguire and Garfield. However, writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers revealed in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that the blockbuster threequel was roughly halfway through production before they’d officially signed on the dotted line.
“All you can do is act like we’re getting everybody that we want and let the powers that be reach out to those people and see if this can actually become a reality.”
No Way Home marked Maguire’s first live-action credit in seven years, while Garfield has built a reputation as one of his generation’s finest actors, so you can bet the pair didn’t come cheap when they effectively held the entire operation to ransom, knowing full well it would fall apart without their involvement.
