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In an unprecedented move, Marvel has published the first three pages of its Spider-Man: Brand New Day script, revealing exactly how the movie begins.
The film’s opening minutes incorporate much of the footage we’ve seen already, in Brand New Day’s record-breaking first trailer. But the script, and handwritten details added by director Destin Daniel Cretton, adds further detail — and already may hint at larger elements in the movie that remain under wraps.
Published by Entertainment Weekly, the script begins right at the Marvel Studios title card, which will show “the memories Peter no longer shares with Ned and MJ and Aunt May” following the end of 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, where Peter Parker’s memory was wiped from their existance.
In handwritten notes added by Cretton, the director points out that Peter Parker has “vanished from existence like Marty [McFly]” in Back to the Future, and “for the first time, Peter is entirely alone.”
Over the studio logos, we’ll hear Tom Holland’s Peter Parker read out the letter he wrote MJ at the end of No Way Home, and see him still in the dingy apartment where we left him last. But this is just nine months after the last film — whereas we know that the bulk of Brand New Day takes place four years later. (Could we be getting a montage? Well, yes, but not quite yet.)
Next, we get an intriguing moment where Peter “gets a small sharp headache,” something the script describes as “our first inkling that living completely in the shadows is taking its toll on Peter — something is changing and maybe not for the better…” This seems very likely to be a nod to what happens to Peter much later in the movie (also glimpsed in the trailer) as we hear suggestion he’s entering a new phase of the spider-y life-cycle, and see him in some kind of cocoon. Mysterious!
Peter then briefly chats to EV, a new AI he has inexplicably created, even as the script confirms his current hardware will be homemade. “No more Stark money or gadgets,” Cretton reminds us. “All of his tech needs to have been made by Peter, via his homemade fabricator — a “3D printer on steroids.” EV, meanwhile, is “sadly the closest thing Peter has to a friend.”
We see mementos from MJ and Ned, a reminder on Peter’s phone to lay flowers at May’s grave, and then an alert which prompts him to watch a post by Ned, showing his former friends’ first day at MIT. As in the trailer, this cuts to Peter watching the video while sitting upside down on a steel beam, high above Manhatten.
“Maybe I’ll never read this to you,” Peter says, at the conclusion of his letter to MJ. “Maybe I’m just writing this for me. Maybe that’s my responsibility: to live alone with the truth. But the truth is I love you. And I hope deep down, something inside you remembers you love me too. Or maybe not. Maybe right now I just need to be Spider-Man.”
With this, Peter swings into action after hearing a police report of some local trouble. The script’s third page concludes with the words “BEGIN MONTAGE:” and that’s as much as we get. However, it seems logical that here we see Peter’s Spider-Man fighting some of the movie’s smaller-scale villains, such as Boomerang and Tarantula, Marvin Jones III’s Tombstone and Michael Mando’s Scorpion, as the action moves forward in time.
For the rest of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, we’ll have to wait until it hits theaters on July 31 — or until whenever Marvel releases its next trailer. Much remains uncertain over the film’s main villains (which seem to be ninja monk clan The Hand), the role of Bruce Banner (who seems set to turn into Savage Hulk), the inclusion of Frank Castle AKA The Punisher (because there aren’t enough characters in this film already), plus whatever’s going on with the character played by Sadie Sink (who may or may not be playing a very famous Marvel character). Phew.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
