‘Spider-Man’ Director Jon Watts Reveals Peter Parker’s Age in the Reboot

We’ve known for some time now that Peter Parker would be heading back to high school in Sony and Marvel’s upcoming Spider-Man reboot — Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige has mentioned John Hughes’ coming-of-age ’80s films as inspiration for the tone of the new standalone movie, and the casting of Tom Holland further indicated that Spider-Man is indeed skewing a bit younger this time around. But just how young? Director Jon Watts has an answer.

While talking to Empire about the Spider-Man reboot, Watts echoed writers John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, who previously assured fans that we won’t be sitting through yet another origin story. Watts also officially revealed the age of our new Peter Parker:

There are only so many times you can kill Uncle Ben… I love the idea of making a coming-of-age high-school movie. We’re really going to see Peter Parker in high school and get deeper into that side of it. He’s just 15 now.

15 is a good age for Peter Parker — both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s versions of the web-slinger were at the end of their high school run in the previous films, with the sequels following them into college. That didn’t give us a lot of time to see Peter grapple with his superhero identity in the context of high school, which is a huge part of the character’s development in the comic books.

Holland will make his debut as Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War, which arrives in theaters on May 6, 2016, followed by a new standalone Spidey film on July 28, 2017.

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