Why was The Amazing Spider-Man 3 canceled, ending the franchise starring Andrew Garfield? For months leading up to the release of Marvel's Spider-Man: No Way Home, reports suggested that Garfield would return as his version of Peter Parker, thanks to multiversal shenanigans. Garfield did indeed appear in the film alongside Tom Holland's MCU Spider-Man, defeating a team of united supervillains. While both The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 drew mixed reactions, Garfield's return to the role was received warmly, with lots of loud cheers erupting in theaters.
To be fair to Garfield, who's more than proven himself as an actor in films like The Social Network and Tick, Tick... Boom!, his performances were never really the problem with The Amazing Spider-Man movies. Garfield's Spider-Man made valiant efforts to raise both films to a high level but was let down by questionable writing choices and characterization decisions, especially in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. That's also true of Jamie Foxx, who also proved in No Way Home that he could play a much better version of Electro.
While The Amazing Spider-Man 2 proved especially divisive among audiences and was trashed by critics, many have come to believe that this response is what caused Sony not to make The Amazing Spider-Man 3 with Garfield. That's actually not true, as the film still performed pretty well at the international box office, even after Amazing Spider-Man 2 failed to meet expectations. Thanks to the infamous 2014 Sony hacking incident, the world knows exactly why Garfield was fired and the answer to the question, why was The Amazing Spider-Man 3 canceled? Garfield failed to show up at a planned press event in Brazil announcing the sequel, and that offended top Sony brass enough to sever ties.
TASM 3 Was A Lot Closer To Being Made Than Many Fans Realize
So why was The Amazing Spider-Man 3 canceled, really? Garfield was set to appear at a big Sony gala event in Rio de Janeiro to celebrate the end of the World Cup in summer 2014. Garfield was supposed to speak alongside then-Sony CEO Kaz Hirai at the event, in which the two men would announce The Amazing Spider-Man 3 for a 2016 release. Unfortunately, Garfield arrived in Brazil late, wasn't feeling great according to his reps, and decided to back out of the event mere hours before the big announcement. This caused Hirai's presentation to be drastically altered, and the Spider-Man announcement part to be canceled. Needless to say, many executives within Sony were quite upset with Garfield's last-minute no-show, including Hirai himself, who felt personally slighted.
As much as most might be inclined to sympathize with Garfield not wanting to appear in front of a large crowd while not feeling well, in a more realistic sense, leaving one's boss hanging out to dry at the last minute is never likely to result in a positive outcome for an employee, movie star or not. With the decision made to cancel The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and fire Garfield from the Spider-Man role, Sony went into Spider-Man negotiations with Marvel for a possible introduction of the character into the MCU. This had been tried before but wasn't successful. The talks resulted in an agreement this time, leading to Tom Holland's Spider-Man debuting in Captain America: Civil War, ironically right around the originally planned 2016 release date of The Amazing Spider-Man 3.
Andrew Garfield Could Be The Spider-Man For Sony's Venom
Although The Amazing Spider-Man 3's initial plan was scrapped, this doesn't necessarily mean the end of Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker. Especially given the incredibly positive audience response to his No Way Home role, it seems that Sony could still stand to gain from pursuing this version of the character further. In many ways, Garfield represents a Peter Parker audiences can most easily empathize with, as he's had to face challenges that feel uniquely adult and real-world compared to some of his counterparts. This is also, in large part, thanks to Garfield's superb acting. Andrew Garfield would be perfect in Venom 3 alongside Tom Hardy's symbiote antihero, as many have correctly pointed out, and weaving the Sony Spider-Verse villains into the existing The Amazing Spider-Man canon would be a great way to ground them better and make them feel more relevant. Even more importantly, it would give this version of Peter Parker the chance to shine that he never got thanks to The Amazing Spider-Man 3's cancelation.