Josh Hutcherson is reflecting on the role that could’ve been over ten years ago when he auditioned for 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man.
The actor was close to playing the Marvel superhero in the reboot, but the role ultimately went to Andrew Garfield. Hutcherson said no one told him why he wasn’t selected to give life to Peter Parker but the silver lining was that he was able to land The Hunger Games instead.
“You never find out,” he told Inverse in an interview about not landing the Spider-Man role. “They just end up hiring somebody else. So, I never found out why. I also do know that three weeks or so after I auditioned, I ended up getting Hunger Games, so it kind of worked out.”
Hutcherson also told the publication he “was a big Spider-Man fan all my life from the old-school cartoons and stuff.”
Garfield recently reprised his role of Spider-Man in 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home as part of the multiverse alongside Tobey Maguire, who had previously portrayed the superhero on the big screen. Given that the multiverse opens up any storyline possibility, Hutcherson said he would be “potentially” interested in playing Spider-Man if given the opportunity, saying, “Yeah, I’d be open to it, man. I’d throw some webs around.”
Although Hutcherson didn’t star in The Amazing Spider-Man, he did star as Peeta Mellark in The Hunger Games saga across four films. Hutcherson would go on to star in films like Escobar: Paradise Lost, The Disaster Artist, Five Night at Freddy’s, and most recently The Beekeeper.
