Spider-Man Will Appear In ‘Captain America: Civil War,’ Says Robert Downey, Jr.

Rumors about Spider-Man appearing in a certain upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe film may have been circulating for a long time, but Robert Downey, Jr. has just now confirmed that everyone’s favorite webslinger will indeed make his MCU debut in Captain America: Civil War.

Marvel has found tremendous success in the movie business in recent years, but it wasn’t always so hands on. Prior to the release of Iron Man in 2008, Marvel commonly licensed its properties out. This practice gave us 20th Century Fox’s popular X-Men films, a series of less acclaimed Fantastic Four movies, and a number of takes on Spider-Man by Sony. It also meant that when Marvel started making its own movies, and tying them all together, characters that it had licensed out were not available to appear.

In a somewhat unorthodox deal last February, Sony and Marvel announced a kind of cooperative initiative that would see Marvel brought on to help produce future Spider-Man movies, which would still be owned and distributed by Sony, while the Spider-Man character would also be made available for Marvel Cinematic Universe movies like the forthcoming Captain America: Civil War.

When the deal was first announced, Marvel confirmed that Spider-Man would indeed appear in a MCU film before starring in his first standalone title, which was slated for release in July, 2017. The assumption then was that Spider-Man would have to appear in Civil War, since the only other options at the time were Doctor Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy. Spider-Man played a pivotal role in the original Civil War comic series, so with the character returning to the MCU fold, it only made sense that he would show up in the Captain America: Civil War movie. The fact that the new Spider-Man, Tom Holland, was cast during the production of Civil War also seemed to bolster the idea, according to The Verge.

Marvel has been very tight-lipped on the subject, which fits with the way the studio has guarded information about the upcoming film. Until now, the rumors and speculation on the subject have been nothing more than educated guesses and wishful thinking.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige jokingly brushed off the idea that Spider-Man might have been spotted on set.

“Listen, if there was a cosplayer running around that set when you were there, I don’t know what to tell you,” Feige told Entertainment Weekly.

Also in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Robert Downey, Jr. went off message and let it slip that, yes, Spider-Man is in Civil War.

“Cheadle and I are just going, ‘Wow, dude, look at this.’ We’re now like the old guard, and our storyline carries real weight just because of our history,” Downey, Jr. told Entertainment Weekly. “But we’re also looking around like, ‘Who thought that Falcon and Black Panther and Ant-Man and now Spider-Man…?’ I mean it’s like wow, this thing is just crazy.”

As previously reported by Inquisitr, Spider-Man hasn’t been the only mystery in terms of characters appearing in Civil War. Hulk is reportedly a no-show, for instance, although that isn’t a total surprise, as he didn’t appear in the comic series. Chris Hemsworth’s Thor will also be absent, although Hulk is slated to appear in the next Thor flick. Then Martin Freeman is another huge question mark, as we know the actor is going to appear, but Marvel has been more or less silent on the role that he will play.

In a somewhat interesting turn of events, especially for anyone who is sick of origin stories, it doesn’t sound like either Captain America: Civil War or the first stand-alone MCU Spider-Man movie will feature any origin story to speak of. Tom Holland is set to portray a teenage Peter Parker though, so it will be interesting to see how he fits into the Civil War story, which originally used Spider-Man’s well-kept secret identity as a major plot point.

[Photo by Neilson Barnard, Jesse Grant/Getty Images]