Spider-Man: Brand New Day opened with scenes that showed how Spider-Man was fighting by himself against various villains. In the opening, there were quick shots of Spider-Man fighting Boomerang, Tarantula, Tombstone, and Ramrod, all with great Easter eggs from the comics. There were also some scenes that were written into early versions of the film that ended up being scrapped. One included Spider-Man needing to hire Matt Murdock to take on an impostor Spider-Man who trademarked the name. However, another had Spider-Man pretending to be British when he met MJ for the first time after he had his identity erased from her memory.
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In an interview with The Bulwark, Spider-Man: Brand New Day co-writer Chris McKenna said that when Spider-Man met MJ for the first time after she forgot who Peter Parker was, he used a fake British accent and, at the time, was going by the name Ben Reilly.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day Almost Used the Name Ben Reilly
Spider-Man: Brand New Day co-writer Chris McKenna said that there were a lot of scrapped plans for the movie in early script drafts. In the movie, Spider-Man had helped MJ and Ned Leeds in the past and saved them, and they remember that, but don’t remember anything about their personal connection to Spider-Man. Peter didn’t actually reconnect with MJ or Ned until the house party he went to. However, in an early version of the script, Spider-Man met MJ earlier than that, but he decided to fake his identity, even though she wouldn’t have remembered him anyway.
McKenna said in the interview that they had Spider-Man pretend to be British, which was a funny idea since Tom Holland is British. The co-writer said the idea was that Holland would try to do an accent in the way he thought an American would do a fake British accent. However, McKenna then said that Peter Parker was also going by the name Ben Reilly in this version of the script. But this would have messed up using Ben Reilly in the future in the MCU.
While McKenna didn’t say why they changed it back to Peter Parker’s name, there is a chance that it was because of Spider-Noir. McKenna mentioned in the interview that there were a lot of things they wanted to do in Spider-Man movies that they had to cancel because of the Sony movies. He said they wanted to use the Spot, but then they found out later that he was going to be in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. They wanted to use Kraven the Hunter because they were told Sony was not going to use him, and they had to cancel that idea. They had plans for the Chameleon before they learned he was in Kraven. Now, Spider-Noir has Ben Reilly as the Nicolas Cage character in that series.
It seems that Spider-Man: Brand New Day was planning to use Ben Reilly’s name as a pseudonym, and that would have messed up any chance of the “Clone Saga” playing out right in the MCU.
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