It might be the most famous (possibly infamous) piece of leaked footage in Hollywood history. OK, well, in superhero movie history, at the very least. All throughout 2021, as Andrew Garfield mounted a year-long denial tour trying to convince the world that he wasn’t going to show up in Spider-Man: No Way Home, leaked footage of the actor in his Spider-Man suit showed up online… making it much harder for the Oscar-nominated actor to continue throwing fans off of his scent. Garfield shared how Sony reacted to the leaked footage, and confirmed that the executives were every bot as disappointed that the cat might have been let out of the bag ahead of schedule. But now we are hearing how this footage could have seen the light of day.
VFX artist Kelly Port, whose credits include several Marvel Cinematic Universe movies as well as Spider-Man No Way Home, sat down for an episode of “Visual Effects Artists React” on Corridor Crew and eventually opened up on HOW the footage of Andrew Garfield probably made its way into the public. When discussing the amount of work that goes into a massive blockbuster of this scale, Port admitted:
It's just thousands of people. Like, our visual effects team was by far our biggest team there is and often the leaks don't necessarily come from VFX. In this case, I think they did, or an out-sourced vendor is where I think [the leak] really came from. I think the main thing that keeps people from doing it is just, they're gonna lose their job, like, forever. As a studio, when Marvel/Sony sends over a sequence to a visual effects studio to begin work, we call that a turnover. And then when they get that, it's usually sent as a sequence, and your name is watermarked across the whole thing... that's sort of the preventative medicine.
Except, in this case, the threat of getting fired wasn’t “preventative medicine” enough to stop that infamous shot of an unmasked Andrew Garfield squatting in front of a blue screen and holding on to what fans believed to be the scaffolding system that was structured around the Statue of Liberty. It’s now impossible for me to get to that point of the finished movie and NOT think about the leak when I see Garfield looking up at Tobey Maguire and Tom Holland while they swap war stories from being Spider-Man. That shot is now as much a part of the lore of the film as anything else.
This also led to Andrew Garfield having to make very public denials of his role in Spider-Man: No Way Home. He lied on late night talk shows. He denied involvement when on red carpets. Garfield made an analogy about playing a game called Werewolf, just to do everything in his power to keep fans in the dark for the benefit of the surprise.
In addition to the leaked footage of the actor in costume, Andrew Garfield also had his presence spoiled by a delivery person bringing him food in Atlanta, then sharing on social media that they just brought eats to Spider-Man. For real, this was one of the worst kept secrets in Hollywood for the better part of a year, and yet, when most of us sat down in the theater to watch Spider-Man: No Way Home, there was still an element of doubt, leading to massive reactions when both Garfield and Toby Maguire showed up on screen. At least, bigger reactions than Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock received.
Fans can own Spider-Man: No Way Home now, as it is available on digital, as well as on Blu-ray and 4K DVD. If you are so inclined, you can see an extension of the Spider-Man universe, Jared Leto’s Morbius, in theaters as we speak… though the reviews haven’t been so hot, so you can also just hold out for the new Doctor Strange or the next Thor, which just dropped its initial teaser.
