Zendaya Joins Marvel’s SPIDER-MAN Reboot In Leading Role
With Captain America: Civil War all set to reveal the new web crawler in two months, the Jon Watts helmed reboot is about get underway. And while we don’t know what it’s going to be called yet (my money’s on The Spectacular Spider-Man), it seems Marvel has found an actress to share the screen with Tom Holland.
Welcome to the MCU, Zendaya.
The nineteen-year-old singer/model has a fair bit of acting experience under her belt, including a leading role on Disney Channels’ Shake It Up and an appearance on this season of Blackish. While we don’t quite know who she’s playing yet, we do have a couple of clues. Deadline reports she’s playing a character named “Michelle” and while that could certainly be a fake name for pre-production purposes (sneaky, sneaky!), it could also mean she’s playing Spidey supporting character Michele Gonzales, created by Mark Waid in 2009.
Michele, a fiery martial artist and firearm enthusiast, was Peter Parker’s roommate and fling for a brief period. Her brother also happens to be part of the NYPD, which could certainly complicate things if that’s who Zendaya’s playing, but I’m sure we’ll know for certain in the coming months. Maybe it’s too early to speculate, though I wouldn’t put it past Hollywood to cast a girl of mixed Caucasian and African American ethnicity as a Latina. Still, casting a woman of colour as the co-lead in a big superhero movie is neat, and Marvel also wants to populate this cast with non-white faces, which I’m all for since, you know, Peter’s from New York.
The Spidey re-boot swings into theatres July 7th, 2017.
