Marvel Animation originally announced ‘Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man,’ as a prequel to ‘Captain America: Civil War’ and ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming,’ intended to explore Peter Parker’s early days as a vigilante before he met Tony Stark and received his advanced suit.
Later, the studio revealed that the series would exist in its own separate universe, showing the hero against enemies such as Chameleon, Scorpion, and Doctor Octopus, mentored by Norman Osborn instead of Tony Stark.
Head of Marvel Television Brad Winderbaum recently explained the decision to move away from the MCU on the ‘Phase Hero’ podcast, saying, “It started out as ‘Okay, it’s Spider-Man’s freshman year, he’s going to be a freshman, can we get away with this being entirely in the MCU?,’ and very early on in the development process, we realized how locked in that actually made us.”
“We couldn’t really use his rogues gallery, we couldn’t really use his origin. It was not fun, honestly. We would’ve had to put so many limiters on our story to get it to lock into canon.”
Winderbaum also said that connecting the series to the MCU created difficulties for the team. “Every single project I’ve worked on, they’ve all had a life of their own. You have to let them live their own lives and go where they want to go,” he shared. “It does have a lot of DNA that is very similar to the MCU depiction of the Tom Holland Spider-Man, but it really also draws all the way back to Steve Ditko. It’s adjacent to the main continuity but really speaks to what is inherent about the character.”
The upcoming series focuses on Peter Parker as he learns to be a hero in a style inspired by his earliest comic book appearances. The voice cast includes Hudson Thames, Colman Domingo, Eugene Byrd, Grace Song, Zeno Robinson, Hugh Dancy, and Charlie Cox.
Jeff Trammell serves as the head writer, and Mel Zwyer as the supervising director. Winderbaum executive produces alongside Kevin Feige, Louis D’Esposito, Dana Vasquez-Eberhardt, and Trammell.
‘Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’ premieres on Disney+ on January 29, 2025.
