page_title: Spider-Man: Homecoming
section_title: Pre-production
hierarchical_section_title: Spider-Man: Homecoming / Production / Pre-production
caption_attribution_description: English: Jon Watts speaking at the 2016 San Diego Comic Con International, for Spider-Man: Homecoming, at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California.
context_page_description: Spider-Man: Homecoming is a 2017 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character Spider-Man, co-produced by Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios, and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. It is the second Spider-Man film reboot and the 16th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film is directed by Jon Watts, from a screenplay by the writing teams of Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, Watts and Christopher Ford, and Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers. Tom Holland stars as Peter Parker / Spider-Man, alongside Michael Keaton, Jon Favreau, Gwyneth Paltrow, Zendaya, Donald Glover, Jacob Batalon, Laura Harrier, Tony Revolori, Bokeem Woodbine, Tyne Daly, Marisa Tomei, and Robert Downey Jr. In Spider-Man: Homecoming, Peter Parker tries to balance high school life with being Spider-Man while facing the Vulture.
  In February 2015, Marvel Studios and Sony reached a deal to share the character rights of Spider-Man, integrating the character into the established MCU. The following June, Holland was cast as the title character and Watts was hired to direct. This was followed shortly by the hiring of Daley and Goldstein.
context_section_description: Watts wanted to heavily pre-visualize the film, especially its action sequences, as he does on all his films. For Homecoming, Watts worked with a team to "figure out the visual language for the action sequences and ... try stuff out before" filming began to help Watts practice given his lack of experience working on large-scale films. For the "web-slinging" sequences, Watts wanted to avoid the big "swoopy" camera moves that had been previously used and instead "keep it all as grounded as possible. So, whether it was shooting with a drone camera or a helicopter or a cable-cam, or even just handheld, up on a roof chasing after him, I wanted it to feel like we were there with him."
  In January 2016, Sony shifted the film's release date to July 7, 2017, and said the film would be digitally remastered for IMAX 3D in post-production. J. K. Simmons expressed interest in reprising his role as J. Jonah Jameson from Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films. In early March, Zendaya was cast in the film as Michelle, and Tomei was confirmed as May Parker. The following month, Feige confirmed that characters from previous MCU films would appear, and clarified that the deal formed with Sony does not specify which characters can and cannot crossover. He noted that the sharing between the studios was done with "good faith" in order "to have more toys to play with as we put together a story", and that "the agreement was that it is very much a Sony Pictures movie... we are the creative producers. We are the ones hiring the actor, introducing him in [Civil War], and then working right now on the script and soon to be shooting." Sony Pictures chairman Tom Rothman further added that Sony has final greenlight authority, but were deferring creatively to Marvel. At CinemaCon 2016, Sony announced the title of the film to be Spider-Man: Homecoming, a reference to the common high school tradition homecoming as well as the character "coming home" to Marvel and the MCU. Tony Revolori – who had auditioned for Peter Parker – and Laura Harrier joined the cast as classmates of Parker's, and Downey Jr. was revealed to be in the film as Stark. Watts noted that Stark "was always a part of" the films' story because of his interactions with Parker in Civil War.
  Also in April, Michael Keaton entered talks to play a villain, but dropped out of discussions shortly thereafter due to scheduling conflicts with The Founder. He soon reentered talks for the role after a change in schedule for that film, and closed the deal in late May. In June, Michael Barbieri was cast as a friend of Parker's, Kenneth Choi was cast as Parker's high school principal, and Logan Marshall-Green was cast as another villain alongside Keaton's character, while Donald Glover and Martin Starr joined the cast in undisclosed roles. Watts said that he wanted the cast to reflect Queens as "one of [the] most diverse places in the world", with Feige adding that "we want everyone to recognize themselves in every portion of our universe. [With this cast] especially, it really feels like this is absolutely what has to happen and continue." This is also different from the previous films, which were "set in a lily-white Queens high school". Additionally, Marvel made a conscious decision to mostly avoid including or referencing characters who appeared in previous Spider-Man films, outside of major ones like Peter and May Parker, and Flash Thompson. This included the Daily Bugle, with co-producer Eric Hauserman Carroll saying, "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." This also included the character Mary Jane Watson, but Zendaya's Michelle was eventually given the initials "MJ" as a nod to that character. Feige said that the point of this is "to have fun with [references] while at the same time having it be different characters that can provide a different dynamic".
  Spider-Man's costume in the film has more technical improvements than the previous suits, including the logo on the chest be
caption: Watts promoting Spider-Man: Homecoming at the 2016 San Diego Comic-Con
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2016:07:30 12:46:41", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4628", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1920", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2880"}