Tom Holland's Spider-Man: Brand New Day Script Issues Resulted In Key Marvel Change

With a little under two months to go until Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings into theaters, it’s been revealed how Tom Holland’s issues with the movie’s script were handled.

Holland’s version of Peter Parker has been sitting on the Marvel Cinematic Universe sidelines since Spider-Man: No Way Home’s release in December 2021. Now Brand New Day, the next of the upcoming Marvel movies, is bringing him back into action as Phase Six starts winding down. Now word has come in about the talent who played a key role in delivering the final product movie-going audiences will see.

The Wrap has confirmed that Challengers and Queer scriptwriter Justin Kuritzkes revised Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s screenplay. He will receive a writing credit alongside the previous writers, Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, who penned Holland’s first three Spider-Man movies. This is the first time the duo has shared screenwriting credit on one of Spidey’s big-screen adventures since 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, which McKenna and Sommers co-wrote with Jon Watts, Christopher Ford, Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley.

This confirmation of Kuritzkes’ involvement in Brand New Day follows Holland’s recent appearance on Good Hang with Amy Poehler, where he told the podcast’s title host that a screenwriter named “Justin” helped him, Zendaya, and director Destin Daniel Cretton rewrite a scene involving Peter and MJ. The actor recalled what Cretton said on that day:

He said to the crew, ‘Everyone can go home. We’re going to sit down, and we’re going to rewrite this scene with the writer, Justin, who is such a talent.’ We came in the next day, we reshot the scene, and I’m so glad we did, because it sings in the movie. It really does.

Zendaya already had ties established with Kuritzkes through the aforementioned Challengers, which was directed by Luca Guadagnino, the screenwriter’s frequent collaborator. Spider-Man: Brand New Day also marks Kuritzkes’ second time working within the superhero genre. He previously wrote the script for a Sgt. Rock movie set in the DC Universe franchise that Guadagnino was going to direct. However, that project has since been paused, and Guadagnino is no longer attached to helm it.

While it remains to be seen which Spider-Man: Brand New Day scene Holland said Kuritzkes helped fix, the movie does delve into a new dynamic between Peter and MJ. At the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange erased the world’s knowledge of Peter Parker in order to stop a multiversal incursion. With MJ no longer aware of her past with Peter, Brand New Day catches up with her in a new romantic relationship.

In addition to dealing with that personal struggle and grappling with whether he should tell MJ the truth, Spider-Man: Brand New Day also follows Holland’s Web-Slinger going through a mysterious transformation, crossing paths with established MCU protagonists like Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner/Hulk and Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle/Punisher, and battling villains like Boomerang, Tarantula, and The Hand. The movie’s other cast members include Michael Mando reprising Mac Gargan/Scorpion, Jacob Batalon reprising Ned Leeds, Marvin Jones III as Lonnie Lincoln/Tombstone, and Sadie Sink in an undisclosed role.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day arrives in theaters on July 31. Holland’s previous Spider-Man appearances can all be streamed on Disney+, and the actor will also be seen on the big screen two weeks earlier in Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation of The Odyssey.