(clapping) - Face it tiger,
you just hit the jackpot.
Maybe.
On today's Nerdist News.
(bright music)
Who is Zendaya really playing in Spider-Man: Homecoming?
We sent Nerdist's own crackerjack reporter Kristy Puchko
to the set in Atlanta and she came home
with some pretty interesting revelations.
We have known for a while that the Disney star
turned Spider-verse supporting actress
will be playing a character named Michelle
in the upcoming Homecoming,
and since that little tidbit was announced,
people have been speculating that Michelle
is just a code word for Mary Jane Watson,
Peter Parker's long time love interest
in the comics and films.
And we get it.
Studios are having to play things
pretty close to the vest these days,
mostly to avoid snowballing rumors and leaks
of the exclusive morsels they might otherwise use
to tantalize fans into huge auditoriums
at the various cons that have become essential linchpins
for big tent pole productions like this one.
But when Nerdist stuck its nose
into Sony slash Disney slash Marvel's business
on the Homecoming set, we discovered that executives
all the way down to the cast and crew
were especially cagey about
the Michelle slash Mary Jane theory.
For instance, when Marvel producer Eric Carroll
was asked about this particular rumor,
he only said, quote,
"I can tell you that Zendaya
"is playing a character named Michelle.
"And I promise you, when the movie comes out,
"that her name is Michelle."
Even ex-Sony head Amy Pascal, the woman on the hook
for the leaking-est Sony leak that ever leaked from Sony,
seemed to have finally learned the art of the dodge.
When grilled about who this Michelle character
is really supposed to be, she responded with, quote,
"Peter has lots of girls around hin in this movie."
and I like to think that she then disappeared
in a cloud of smoke after popping off with this gemstone,
but apparently, she just changed the subject.
Then there's director John Watts, who rebuffed questions
with an enigmatic response about how
there's more than one character
named Michelle in the comics,
a statement that is both true and offensively vague.
There's more than one character named Bruce too, John.
That still doesn't tell us who Peter's frenching
under the bleachers in the gym.
Now even if Zendaya's Michelle isn't actually Mary Jane,
the weird level of evasiveness on the subject
leads us to believe that Homecoming filmmakers
are hiding at least a little something something.
And like we do, we have a couple of theories of our own.
First, unlike the supermodel-y Mary Jane of yore,
Zendaya's character in the second Homecoming trailer
is messy-haired and broody, and has her face buried
in W. Somerset Maugham's sexy-sounding literary classic,
Of Human Bondage.
She certainly seems to come off as a sullen academic loner,
and as Spider-Man friends slash love interests go,
this does remind us of someone from the comics,
the aloof, brainy version of Gwen Stacy
from the Ultimate Spider-Man series.
Unlike the glitzy, popular Gwen Stacy
from the Silver Age Marvel comics,
the Ultimate Gwen is a rebellious but studious
manic pixie dream girl with multiple piercings
and an endless array of belly shirts.
One of the webcrawler's eventual Spider-lovers,
this Gwen Stacy variant carries the same
bookworm-y, no-nonsense vibe that Zendaya exudes
in the brief moments that we've seen her in the trailers.
Plus, and follow us down this rabbit hole for just a minute,
Spidey's other Homecoming bud, Ned Leeds,
is an obvious homage to another character
from the Ultimate Spider-Man books,
his best friend, Ganke Lee.
So, pulling a few more Ultimate characters for continuity
isn't the craziest thing that we've heard.
As an added bonus, Disney slash Marvel has announced
that their Ultimate Spider-Man animated TV series
will be injecting Gwen Stacy into the mix,
not just as a high school student Gwen Stacy,
but as Spider-Gwen from the ongoing comic line,
an alternate universe superheroine who was bitten
by the radioactive spider instead of Peter Parker.
Now, if Sony's planning an extended universe
similar to the MCU, a animated Gwen could be a test run
for a standalone web-slinging Zendaya flick.
That is also not the craziest thing that we've ever heard.
Theory two, per producer Eric Carroll,
we know that Zendaya's character name is Michelle,
and per director John Watts,
we know that there's more than one Michelle in the comics.
But there's only one Michelle in the Spider-verse.
Michelle Gonzales, the tempestuous one-time roommate
and lover of none other than Peter Parker,
who first appeared in the Amazing Spider-Man comics
back in 2009.
Could Zendaya's Michelle be a younger version
of Amazing's Michelle?
This is possible, though based on
the character's lack of fan fervor,
probably not as plausible
as a wall-crawling update of Gwen Stacy.
But what do you think?
Who else from Spider history could Michelle be?
Or is Michelle just Michelle?
And just who is Spider-Man taking
to this homecoming we've been hearing so much about?
Let's discuss.
(bright music)