Via Yahoo! Movie News – there’s a Twitter campaign underway to have the next Spider-Man be African American – specifically Donald Glover from NBC’s “Community.”
From the Yahoo! Movie News article:
Could the movies soon have the first African American Spider-Man?
If thousands of Twitter users get their way, the star of Sony’s upcoming reboot of the franchise will be Donald Glover, best known from his role on NBC’s “Community.” This weekend the Twitter hashtag “donald4spiderman” became the #3 trending topic in the U.S., and the campaign is still gaining steam.
The origins of this latest attempt by social media users to influence casting decisions occurred last week. After surveying the five mostly unknown white actors said to be vying for the role, Marc Bernadin, a writer for the sci-fi site io9.com, called the choices “bland” and asked, “In this day and age, why does Spidey have to be a white guy?” In response, commenters threw out Donald Glover’s name as a possible contender, and a Twitter campaign was born.
A unique aspect of this latest fan campaign is its wholehearted support by the subject in question. Glover seems to like the idea (though he makes it clear on his Twitter page that he’s interested in auditioning, not just being handed the role without first having to prove his worthiness). While he had nothing to do with its inception, Glover himself has been promoting the campaign, instructing fans to tweet the #donald4spiderman hash tag at strategic times to keep it trending.
The article by io9.com writer Marc Bernardin referenced in the Yahoo! Movies article can be found at this link. From his May 28th write-up:
So why couldn’t Peter Parker be played by a black or a Hispanic actor? How does that invalidate who Peter Parker is? I’m not saying that the producers need to force the issue; that they need to cast a minority just for the sake of it — but in the face of such underwhelming options like Billy Elliot and the kid who played young Voldemort, why not broaden the search? It’s not like any of these blokes are lighting the world on fire like a young Johnny Depp or Leonardo DiCaprio.
And don’t tell me it’s because an actor of color would hurt the box office: Not only is Spider-Man one of the most recognizable fictional characters on the planet, and managed to do just fine with Tobey “Snoozeville” Maguire playing him, whoever they cast WILL BE IN A MASK FOR HALF THE DAMNED MOVIE. AND ON THE POSTER.
I remember the hue and cry that was raised when the rumor floated that Will Smith was offered the role of Captain America, despite the fact that the very military drug experiments that turned Steve Rogers into a superman would’ve most definitely been tested on black WWII soldiers first (as Kyle Baker so expertly theorized in Truth: Red, White and Black). Now, I like Chris Evans a lot, but I’d be way more interested in a black Cap film — and, honestly, no actor alive comes across as more American than Will Smith. And, if The Avengers does borrow from the Civil War storyline, wouldn’t a Will Smith-Robert Downey Jr. face-off be infinitely more interesting? The road not taken.
Just thought you Crawl Spacers would want to know. The subject is on the Yahoo! front page as I type this. Have a great week, gang!
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…..no.
Ok, here are my cast revisions for when the Avengers movie comes out.
Captain America: Jackie Chan
Iron man: O J Simpson (if he still does movies lol)
Hulk: Jessica Alba
Thor: Johnny Depp
Nick Fury: Samual Jackson (Because you know Harrison Ford never made sense for the role)
My point is if the goal is ethic diversity make use of the characters that already represent ethnic diversity. A Luc Cage & Ironfist movie would be far superior to changing the race of an existing character. While both Marvel and DC need to work harder to make their minority characters more important in their existing universes its equally damaging to simply change the race of somebody. For example, Nick Fury, how is a black man going to be promoted and revered in the military at the time Fury was involved. Second example, The Kingpin, again how could a black man become the leader of all organized crime when traditionally they we used for dirty work.
In this day and age, why does MJ Watson has to be a Woman??? LOL
They might as well have Van Diesel play Luke Cage.
Hey Enigma,
When it comes to Nick Fury, I see him as his original incarnation–crusty, cranky white guy who smokes cigars and reminds me of Clint Eastwood. As I mentioned, for me, it’s all about portraying the characters by how they were originally conceived.
F.F.S…(for @#$% sake)…kill the reboot already….in this case, Mary Jane will be played by a dude or maybe a robot… because why not?
I think this ethnic diversity thing is stupid. Why can’t these characters be casted like they are in the original comics? This should not be a racial issue. If the black panther is black in the comics, he should be black in the movie, not hispanic, not Chinese, not white. Be true to the book.
……………
… folks, I’m black, and even I think this is stupid. Now if they ever do a black Ultimate Spider-Man, then we’ll talk.
Unfortunately, he’s always been a white guy, so they’re not gonna change him NOW.
You’d be better off asking them to try and mainline one of their existing African-American characters… and you’d probably have just as much luck with that, unfortunately.
Kane, I kinda have to disagree with you one one thing… like Michael Clarke-Duncan in my opinion, if he could play the part like you wanted, are you saying you couldn’t accept Sam Jackson as Nick Fury?
Let me pose this question: If B.A. Baracus was being played by a white guy, what would your reaction be? It would be wrong, right? It would be a case of the character not truly being the character as originally portrayed, right? Could you picture some whitebread guy like Chris Evans with a mohawk spouting the line “I pity da fool”? I think not.
Peter Parker is white. End of story. I believe that if you’re bringing a character from the four-color page to the big screen, you need an actor who looks, sounds, and embodies the part. Am I the only one who thinks that it’s retarded that Disney couldn’t hire an actual Persian to the the “Prince of Persia”? Instead we get Jake Gyllenhaal? Seriously? That’s a slap in the face to the creators of the franchise from which the movie was supposedly was based on; you know, an actual PERSIAN who’s a PRINCE. This isn’t “Prince of Scarsdale”.
Robert Downey Jr. isn’t just perfect as Tony Stark because he sounds and acts like him. He LOOKS the part. I don’t think Will smith could have pulled the character off. And, yes, I think it’s a travesty that Samuel L. Jacksopn is Nick Fury. I understand that the Nick Fury of the Marvel Ultimate Universe line is black, but, come on. I want my classic cigar-totin’, five o’clock shadow, Clint Eastwood-style Nick Fury. Is the character I am referring to a white guy? Yes, he is.
This has nothing to do with race. This has to do with getting an actor who can actually look the part. If they ever got an Irish guy to play Aladdin in a live-action flick, it would be wrong. Same goes for anyone other than a whitebread nerd to play Peter Parker. And I don’t care how long he spends the movie in a mask.
He looks like “Jaleel White”
This would work if and only if sipdey wore the black costume
I’m curious how Nick Fury will be portrayed in the new Captain America Movie. Will Dum dum also be black. It’s funny, i was pissed when Petes eyes were blue in the first Spider-man movie but for some reason Don Glover doesn’t seem like such a bad choice to me. Then i think about it and isn’t Pete supposed to be kind of any everyman, someone any male can relate to? I do agree with Glover about the proving himself bit. “Some day i’ll show whitey! >Sob< Some day they be sorry! –Sorry they laughed at me!" Science Exhibit: Experiments in Radioactivity…Open to public
And yeah, if Hollywood wants a young black hero, hire Dwayne “The Man” McDuffie and get a STATIC movie out there! FOR REALZ
Okay here’s my thing. I honestly don’t have a problem with changing ethnicities in characters for other media besides the comics. I really don’t, if the movies wanted a black Robin or Green Arrow, then whatever. Seriously, we all say race doesn’t matter and that it’s the personalites of the characters that we love so much, so at times like this it’s time to out our money where our mouth is. And I can safely speak for myself when I say, meh, whatever. The overwhelming majority of these classic characters were all created before the Civil Rights movement, so yeah they’re mostly white, but in this day and age would they be now? It’s factors like that that changes things for me.
However at the same time, I think with certain characters race is very much an integral part of their personal history, just like it is for people in real life. If you were doing a biopic, you cannot do one on Oprah or Sidney Poitier and cast someone who isn’t black. No way. With Peter Parker, his character was a groundbreaker in that he represented a certain collection of young readers at the time who found themselves reflected in the issues of ASM. Peter is a product of his time, with Cold War connotations steeped in science and although his story can be updated for modern times like the movies and Ultimate, it just changes too many things thematically if he’s made into a black kid. Why does he get picked on all the time? Why can’t he catch a break? Why does he live in a single parent (figuratively speaking) household. To change it at all suggests an attempt to create certain undercurrent themes that were never present in the original source material, and by doing that you aren’t respecting the character, you’re starting an agenda, intentionally or not.
So while I could give two craps less about someone’s race, there are definitely times when changing it would do more harm than good. Spider-Man’s one of those characters, funny enough.
I could not stand Tobey Maguire’s portrayal of Peter Parker, so anybody else playing Spidey would suffice…
Also, I can completely understand the angle that it may work better for a kid ‘who is raised by his aunt, in a poor part of town, who loses his uncle to crime’ to be played by a non-white actor…but how far do you take it?…Will he be a African American in a sea of Caucasians (iow, will his peers, Harry, Flash, MJ, Gwen?) be played by white or non-white actors/actresses?
Most likely, if you change the ethnicity Peter Parker, you end up changing Aunt May, Uncle Ben, possibly Mary Jane…I think the irony of doing that would be that characters that were non-white ethnicities before the change (ie, Joe Robertson) could end up being played by white actors/actresses, for the simple sake of having some balance in the cast…the movie would have a totally different feel if that were the case, and JJ Jameson would just come off as a racist, not a tyrannical publisher…imo…
At the end of the day though, if you distill Spider-Man down to his message, great power, great responsibility…it really shouldn’t matter his skin color…
Ugh. I feel like pimp slapping a hoe over this one.
He needs to be Static!
Static is a very popular Peter Parker-like AFRICAN AMERICAN character.
I love the fact that diversity is getting some love right now but c’mon seriously America.
You have a very cool “underrated” character here and your being stupid. This reminds me of that guy that wanted to name his child Batman if he reached 50,000 fan tags on Facebook!
…there is nothing else to say.
maybe we can get Nic Cage to play Blade next!
Glover would be a better Peter Parker then Tobey. At least Glover wouldn’t put in a wooden performance.
Agree wholeheartedly with Sarcasmic. Ethnicity of the character really isn’t a big deal with Peter. He’s one of the few superheroes whose race you could change and it really wouldn’t affect much at all. In fact it might even make more sense if presented correctly. As long as it isn’t a gimmick or played simply as the “race card” and works for the character I’m game. I know that’s a rarity, but I also like Donald Glover a lot, and think he could pull it off. If anything, he’s make Spidey fun again.
I doubt it’s going to happen, but I’d be cool if it did.
*throws myself in front of the train*
I’d rather see him than any of the other choices. Out of all the choices, Spidey is the most reasonable one to change for ethnic reasons.
It’s the story of a kid living with his aunt in a poor part of town, struggling to make a change after he loses his uncle to a crime.
It’s not like Cap America, who was picked for the Super Soldier program in the racist 1940s…
Or Thor, who is a Norse God…
And I think Donald Glover could do it. He’s funny, he’s good at being a nerd, he has the body frame to play Peter after the change (Just put some baggy clothes on him at the start) And he’s got great comedic timing.
That being said, there is no chance. Sony’s got a lot riding on this and they won’t risk changing the color of Peter’s skin.
But this is some great marketing for them.
*tip toes away…*
**FACEPALM**
There are liberties that can be taken when adapting another medium as a film, but changing an ICONIC lead character’s nationality is not & should not be one of them. Aside from blatantly alienating the fan community, producers etc will also be upsetting a large part of the movie-going public.
I’m actually Native American. (For reals, even). So we may not have to recast Brad.
That being said – yeah I’m against this for the same reason I don’t want to see Luke Cage played by a white guy or Shang Chi played by a Latino. And on the flip side I’d really rather see a really good Luke Cage/Iron Fist movie right now than a rebooted Spider-Man movie.
fail
I’m Latino And All Up For Diversity And Equality But you Do Not Mess With Spider-Man’s Ethnicity. This Is Only Because Of The Beautiful Performance Of Michael Clark Duncan As Kingpin in Daredevil. But Kingpin Is Not As Iconic As The Amazing Spider-Man. Peter Parker Has Always Been White And Should Be White.
That was priceless Spider-Plumber. Brad has to be recast for ethnic diversity. Sorry Brad but George, Zach, Kevin, JR, and Micheal Baily screwed it up for you man. 🙂
Why can’t Spidey be Japanese? Why does it even have to be Peter Parker under the mask?
Masahiro Inoue as Takuya Yamashiro for the Spidey reboot! MARVELLER!!! CHANGE LEOPARDON!
I’m working on pushing the hashtag #masahiroinoue4spiderman as I type this…
“In this day and age, why does Spidey have to be a white guy?”
um….’cause Spidey is a white guy.
Idiots, all of them.
Hey gang – I’m going to do a Biopic of the Spider-Man Crawlspace….but I’m gonna get LeVar Burton to play Brad Douglas!
Idiots.