Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Jacob Batalon Share Competing "Spider-Man 3" Titles
We can't wait for "Spider-Man: Home on the Range"!
Update: The official title has now been revealed as Spiderman: No Way Home. Could still be a Planes, Trains and Automobiles remake.
On Tuesday Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Jacob Batalon — the three young stars of the Spider-Man franchise — shared some early images from the forthcoming third installment in the series.
The movie is filming now in Atlanta, and scheduled for release in December of 2021. The teaser images seem to all be taken from the same section of the movie, showing the three "teens" investigating a seemingly abandoned, partially-frozen building — and possibly encountering a threat there, based on Tom Holland's face in the image he shared.
But as much fodder for speculation as these first shots offer, the real fun comes from the fact that each of the stars claimed to be "so excited" to finally reveal the film's title: Spider-Man: Phone Home. Wait, no... Spider-Man: Home-Wrecker... er, Home Slice?
Okay, so it's possible that they were trolling fans, offering three different versions of a title screen, with three jokey titles playing on the Homecoming and Far from Home title convention. As one fan put it, "Zendaya, Tom and Jacob really woke up and chose violence."
The funnier explanation would be that director Jon Watts gave each of his young stars a different title to share. That's certainly the version they tried to sell, with Zendaya and Batalon responding to Tom Holland's post with "What the hell," and "Woah woah.. wait.. why is your different?!?"
But Home Slice, and Phone Home? What are the chances they could actually have believed these titles.
Another theory has it that the three competing titles are actually confirmation of a long-rumored crossover of the three live-action Spider-Man movie universes, with cameos from Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. One fan even went so far as to assign each title to a different version of the hero.
According to this theory, Home Slice refers to Toby Maguire's pizza-delivery Spider-Man, Home-Wrecker points to Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man destroying the Stacy family, and Phone Home is about Tom Holland's Spider-Man frequently being on the phone with handlers Tony Stark and Happy Hogan. Seems like a stretch...
So far Tom Holland has denied that any such cameos are planned — at least as far as he's aware — though he confirmed a cameo from his younger brother Harry Holland, as a drug dealer. The more realistic explanation is that this whole title tease was just meant to drum up some buzz as publicity for the new film kicks off.
In that sense it certainly worked. Many fans were tuning into Tom Holland's appearance on The Tonight Show on Tuesday, expecting the real title to be revealed with Jimmy Fallon. But Holland — notorious in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for sharing details he's not supposed to — managed to remain tight-lipped.
But as long as we're speculating about possible titles, why stop at the titles the stars shared? There are lots of phrases with "home" in them, and each one implies a different story for Spider-Man 3:
Spider-Man: Home for the Holidays — As Christmas approaches Peter, MJ, and Ned go on yet another school trip, and get stranded thanks to bad weather. They have to figure out how to get back to Queens in time for the holidays, but are beset by constant obstacles and by an obnoxious tagalong (possibly "Flash" Thompson?) in a spiritual remake of Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
Spider-Man: Homeward Bound — Basically the same as above, except that a super-villain transforms the trio into two dogs and a cat, and they have to fight a bear at some point. Peter is the cat, and he still has spider powers.
Spider-Man: Home-Field Advantage — A powerful villain sets up shop in Queens while other heroes are occupied elsewhere. Normally this would be too big a threat for Spider-Man to handle on his own, but he and his friends use their knowledge of famous Queens landmarks and the support of the community to gain an advantage. This version is partially funded by the Queens Tourism Board.
Of course there's always the possibility that they skip the whole "home" thing, and just tell a Spider-Man story that isn't built around a matching title... But then we would have nothing to talk about, and we want to talk about Spider-Man!