J.K. Simmons wanted to do Spider-Man 4 with Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire. When Sony rebooted The Amazing Spider-Man, they eliminated his character J. Jonah Jameson completely. However, since they didn’t recast the Daily Bugle editor, there’s been speculation that maybe Simmons could cross over and play the same role in the new universe. Simmons was at the Television Critics Association press tour last week for his ABC show “Family Tools,” so we asked him if he’d be open to playing Jameson in the new version.
“Oh, I’m open to anything,” Simmons said. “Obviously that was enormous fun playing that character. A big part of the fun was doing it with Sam and with Tobey. Like I said I literally have not seen the movie. I don’t even know tonally how different it may or may not be. I’m a fan of the actors, the director and everything else. Yeah, I’m always open.”
Earlier, Simmons had told the TCA panel that he did not see The Amazing Spider-Man and let J. Jonah Jameson go years ago. “Well, the Spider-Man thing, for those of us who were doing the first franchise, that rug got pulled out from under us like two-and-a-half years ago, you know. So, that water is well under the bridge. I love making those movies with Sam and with everybody, and we had a great time. Now, the studio is doing a different version of it. But that seems like ancient history. And, because I don’t get out much, I haven’t seen the movie or the Broadway play or the cartoon, which I do a voice on.”
However, Simmons did receive word from a secondhand source that the Amazing Spider-Man filmmakers considered Simmons such the definitive J. Jonah Jameson that they did not even dare include the character in the reboot.
“I did hear that actually,” Simmons admitted. “I rarely read any of those things but my brother in law picks and chooses and sends them to me. I’d read something about that too, and also that Marc [Webb] had seen me in Summer stock in Montana in 1979 or something and that’s how far back his knowledge of me goes which is father back than everybody else.”
CraveOnline will be back with more speculation on J. Jonah Jameson as soon as we fire that lazy photographer Peter Parker.
