Brand New Day's Original 'Man-Spider' Plans Were Horrifying (And Amazing) - EXCLUSIVE

In my opinion, the most intriguing aspect of Spider-Man: Brand New Day is Peter Parker’s ‘rebirth.’ Throughout the movie, we see Peter become more spider-like as the arachnid DNA increases in his body, leading to things like organic webs and more violent, ‘monster’-like outbursts. 

Like Bruce Banner, who offers an interesting parallel in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Peter is trying everything he can to inhibit his new ‘monstrous’ tendencies. But how far exactly were the writers willing to go with this transformation? As it turns out, pretty far.

In fact, in an exclusive chat with JustWatch, screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers revealed that they actually looked to a horrifying comic book character for inspiration: Man-Spider.

How Were They Going To Incorporate Man-Spider?

As the name implies, Man-Spider is essentially a more horrific and spider-like humanoid than Spider-Man. It is considered to be the last stage of Peter’s genetic mutation, and turns him into a feral creature. In the comics, its defining features include a big spider head and additional limbs.

In terms of how the writers were going to bring that to life, Erik Sommers admitted that they would’ve “loved” to see a full Man-Spider transformation.

McKenna went on to add: “We had some body horror we were championing. It was always a line to walk in terms of how monstrous you could make him. When we pulled back, the compromise was ‘Black eyes!' Black eyes is about as dark as you can go.' A little bit more monstrous could have been fun.”

Sommers then said: “I was really obsessed with him growing these like hairs, you know, like those hairs that spiders have on their legs, those like spiky… I was really pushing for that for a while. 

McKenna then went on to explain how, at one point, Peter had sensilla on his legs. "These are the microscopic hairs on the legs of real spiders. It’s how spiders smell. With this sensilla, he was able to track down a character through smell alone." Apparently, in the script, Peter “hated” this so much that he decided to try and use Lady Bic razors to cut this off. 

“There was a whole scene where he was shaving off these spider hairs that had grown,” he added. Specifically, the shaving scene would’ve been around the same time Peter was working on his inhibitor. Apparently, he was “horrified” by these hairs.

How The Fly Nearly Influenced Brand New Day

McKenna then revealed that an influence for this Man-Spider transformation was the infamous body horror film The Fly.

“You don't want him to turn into a monster, but we thought okay there was always a line and then we would sometimes cross that line for certain people and go, ‘Okay well we're not doing that,’" McKenna concluded. 

Elsewhere in the interview, the writers also revealed that they flirted with the idea of bringing ‘Spiders-Man’ to life, by having all of the spiders of New York flock to Peter and follow him around: even into children’s hospitals. With that in mind, it’s clear that the writers were prepared to go in a bold new direction with this film. Who knows? Perhaps the fifth Spider-Man movie will include some elements of body horror with the introduction of things like the symbiote.