Jake Gyllenhaal Responds to Reports He Almost Replaced Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man

Marvel films are known to depict characters with long histories, transformations, and installations--and this includes the actors that portray them.

One of the best examples of these histories is Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man. Maguire first brought the web-shooting hero to the live-action screen back in 2002, causing a cultural sensation.

What many don’t know is that before shooting Spider-Man 2, Maguire injured his back while filming Seabiscuit. CinemaBlend reports that Marvel started looking for a replacement actor for the sequel pretty much immediately.

Many names were thrown around to play Peter Parker, and Jake Gyllenhaal was reported to be one of them.

Gyllenhaal spoke to Yahoo! writer Kevin Polowy on Friday while promoting Spider-Man: Far From Home, in which Gyllenhaal plays Mysterio. Polowy asked Gyllenhaal about the Spider-Man rumors, to which he responded:

“I heard the same thing. The truth of the matter is, in the end, [Tobey Maguire is] Spider-Man. There are so many roles in my career where I was up against another actor, or there was something happened that possibly could've happened but didn't happen but maybe it would have. Eventually my belief is when an actor's played a character, particularly in a movie, the character's theirs, and that's that. But yeah there was talk, he hurt himself and there was talk. There was a slew of actors [possibly up for the part], and I was one of them.”

As we all know, Maguire ended up playing Spider-Man for the sequel, as well as in Spider-Man 3, proving that everything does happen for a reason.