Spider-Man movies tend to have certain staple elements that come over from the comic books. Peter Parker loses his Uncle Ben. He lives with his Aunt May. Peter's in high school (usually), and he earns money by selling photographs of himself -- as Spider-Man -- to the Daily Bugle. But after the last five Spider-Man movies leaned on that bastion of journalistic integrity, Marvel and Sony appear to be making a left turn as they update Spidey for a new millennium. Or, at least, that's what we thought.
When I recently visited the set of Spider-Man: Homecoming, I asked if we'd see The Daily Bugle in this new version of Spider-Man's story. Marvel's putting their own spin on things, and co-producer Eric Carroll quickly replied:
No. We toyed with it for a while, but again, we didn't want to go down that road right away. And if we do do a Daily Bugle, we want to do it in a way that feels contemporary. Working in a newspaper while fighting crime and overachieving, it just felt like one of those things where like... maybe it's in his future? Maybe it's what he does in college or something like that. But for now, no.
What's unclear, with any certainty, is if Eric Carroll meant that Peter Parker (Tom Holland) won't work at the Daily Bugle in Spider-Man: Homecoming (seeing as he's only a sophomore in high school), or if the Daily Bugle doesn't exist. We know that Manhattan is a far off pipe dream for this Queens-based hero in Homecoming. But recent photos that made their way onto Twitter suggest that set designs on the next Spider-Man movie may have the Bugle involved, somehow.
I don't know how much I trust that source. The front page story on that mock-up Daily Bugle mentions a "Washington Monument Disaster," and we know from the trailers that Spider-Man will have to save his friends from an explosion at the D.C. monument. So it's possible. At the time, I interpreted Eric Carroll's answer as the Daily Bugle being sidelined completely. He went on to wonder aloud if the Bugle should be more of a multi-media news site, a la a Huffington Post or a Buzzfeed, and would Peter find his niche at an outlet like that. But he made it sound, for certain, that it would something explored in future sequels.
Watch the Spider-Man: Homecoming trailer again for scenes from the Washington Monument attack:
My best guess? We won't see The Daily Bugle. And if we do, it will be a very quick Easter Egg reference that true fans will notice, simply because they are combing every frame. Start doing that when Spider-Man: Homecoming opens on July 7. And find out more about every Upcoming Marvel Movie by checking out that link.
