Mary Jane Will Not Appear In The Spider-Man Reboot

Kirsten Dunst stands perplexed in front of a microphone in Spider-Man 3.
(Image credit: Sony Pictures Entertainment/Marvel)

When it was announced that Emma Stone would play Gwen Stacy in the upcoming Spider-Man reboot for Sony, a collective "Huh?" erupted from the movie news community. Though her hair is colored, Stone is largely known to the film-going public as a redhead and one of the most famous redheads in history exists on the pages of Spidey comics: Mary Jane Watson. What made the story only that much stranger was the fact that there was still rumor of Mary Jane appearing in the new film. Now we can put that rumor to rest. The Wrap, while reporting the news of Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben, revealed that the project's writers did consider having a love triangle form between Peter Parker, Gwen, and Mary Jane, but it was abandoned when Stone was cast in the role of the blonde.

Spider-Man 3 did many, many things wrong and one of those things was the love triangle. If the whole point of this reboot is to steer the franchise away from Raimi's third film, they wouldn't be doing themselves a favor by including that bit. The truth is that, in the comics, Gwen Stacy is Peter's first love and while those only familiar with the movies may have a hard time wrapping their minds around that, it sounds as though the film is trying to pay more attention to the original story lines. Let Gwen have her real moment in the movies and save Mary Jane for the sequel.

Eric Eisenberg
Assistant Managing Editor

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.