Spider-Man Will be Aged 15 in Marvel's Forthcoming Reboot

For the second time this decade, Spider-Man is being rebooted for the big screen, and now the director has spoken about his approach to the Spidey story.

Jon Watts is the man in charge of bringing the wise-cracking wallcrawler to cinemas in 2017. As Den Of Geek reports, Watts has discussed the film, which stars British actor Tom Holland as Peter Parker, with Empire magazine.

"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," said Watts. "Tom was pretty perfect. He's very athletic. He can actually do a backflip! If he didn't already capture the spirit of the character, with that on top, the kid is Spider-Man".

Watts' additional quip that "there are only so many times you can kill Uncle Ben" confirms that he won't be telling the overly familiar origin story. In April this year, at a press conference for Avengers: Age of Ultron, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige explained that they were working on the basis that viewers were already familiar with Spider-Man's origins.

"In Spider-Man's very specific case, where there have been two retellings of that origin, for us we are going to take it for granted that people know that, and the specifics," Feige said. "It will not be an origin story. But we want to reveal it in different ways and spend much more time focusing on this young high school kid in the MCU dealing with his powers."

Ahead of the standalone film, it is expected that the new Spider-Man will make his first Marvel Studios appearance in Captain America: Civil War, which is due in May 2016. In February this year, a deal was struck between Marvel and Sony--who hold the big screen right to the character--to allow Marvel to include him in their ongoing Cinematic Universe. 2017's Spider-Man will be a co-production between both studios.