The Amazing Spider-Man franchise was a short-lived experiment. The reboot series launched in 2012 with the intent of establishing Andrew Garfield as the new big screen webslinger, but following the disappointing Amazing Spider-Man 2 all of the future plans were scrapped and a road was paved for Spidey to make his way to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As it turns out, however, that particular universe isn't totally dead, as apparently Jamie Foxx, who played the villainous Max Dillon a.k.a. Electro in Amazing Spider-Man 2, is now in talks to reprise the role in director Jon Watts' upcoming Spider-Man: Far From Home sequel starring Tom Holland.
This shocking news comes to us from The Hollywood Reporter, and will surely generate a large number of "WTF?" responses. There aren't any details made available in the trade report regarding how exactly the character is going to be appearing, or if The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will be considered canonical, but hopefully we'll start to get more details relatively soon.
What makes this news particularly interesting is the existence of the mid-credits scene in Spider-Man: Far From Home, which brought back another important character from a previous Spider-Man live-action series: J.K. Simmons' J. Jonah Jameson. It's worth noting that the loudmouth journalist appears to be a different version of Jameson than the one that was featured in Sam Raimi's trilogy of wall-crawler movies, as he is sporting a completely different hairstyle and runs the Daily Bugle as a news program instead of a newspaper, and it makes one wonder if the upcoming Spider-Man 3 could possibly take a similar tactic with Jamie Foxx's Electro. Could he be a totally different version of the same villain?
This, of course, then leads us to the multiverse question. Fans fully embraced the big screen version of the scientific concept in 2018's animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and this development instantly makes us wonder if we could possibly be seeing a live-action version of it developing here – with the idea being that could see Jamie Foxx's Electro from Amazing Spider-Man 2 make his way from his own universe into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The timing is a bit funny, as DC Comics' upcoming solo Flash film is also going to be dabbling in the arena, specifically by featuring multiple versions of Batman, but there still remains the potential for the blockbuster to do something radically different with the ideas.
Another aspect of this development that will be interesting to gauge is how the fans react to the news. Jamie Foxx's version of Electro was not just dismissed by audiences, but also openly mocked – with many drawing rather apt comparisons between the portrayal of the character and Jim Carrey's version of The Riddler in Batman Forever (when you put them side-by-side, they have surprisingly similar arcs). Will folks be on board with Spider-Man 3 trying to attempt the resurrection? We'll have to wait and see.
The Spider-Man: Far From Home sequel doesn't currently have an official title, but production is expected to start fairly soon given that the film has a November 5, 2021 release date (though it wouldn't be surprising to anyone if that date ended up shifting given everything going on in the world). The arrival of this casting news hopefully means that we'll start hearing even more announcements very soon, so stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for all of the latest.
