Bollywood’s Tiger Shroff may have played a desi superhero in 2016 film A Flying Jatt but did you know that he wanted to be another superhero? Once upon a time, the actor auditioned for Marvel’s Spider-Man. Though the role eventually went to someone else, Shroff said that he was “close” to playing the popular superhero.
On Thursday, the Baaghi actor told ConnectFM Canada that he had once auditioned for the superhero’s role and sent his tapes to the producers. “I had auditioned for Spider-Man. I had sent them my tapes also, my showreel. They were quite impressed with what I could do. My pitch to them was ‘I’d save you a lot of money on VFX because I can do most of what Spider-Man can do’,” Shroff said.
He didn’t mention what year he auditioned in but it might have been for Captain America: Civil War in 2016, which is when a new Spider-Man, played by Tom Holland, debuted. The film was released two years after Shroff’s Bollywood debut in Heropanti. The previous Spider-Man film, The Amazing Spider-Man, was released in 2012, when Shroff was 22.
Since the 2016 film, Holland has portrayed the character in three solo Spider-Man films as well as two Avengers movies. Instead, Shroff voiced the character in the Hindi dub of Spider-Man: Far From Home.
He was appreciated by Holland five years ago when he was shown a video of Shroff dancing to ‘Whistle Baja’ from his debut film in order for him to get to know the actor voicing his character. At that time, Holland had said, “I’m glad someone so talented will be doing voices for me.”
The character of Peter Parker, Spider-Man, has been played by three different actors, Toby Maguire, Andrew Garfield and Holland who came together for 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. There is, however, an Indian Spider-Man in the MCU who goes by the name of Pavitr Prabhakar in the comics, though no Indian actor has brought him to life yet.