Whatever happened to Tobey Maguire? That is a question that is not asked as often as it should nowadays considering how his potential return for Spider-Man: No Way Home has been incessantly hyped up by Marvel fans for over a year now.
Unlike fellow Spider-Man alumni Andrew Garfield, whose career in film and theater has been quite successful since hanging his web-shooters, Maguire chose to slowly walk away from the spotlight after Spider-Man 3 failed to wow both critics and viewers. Since 2007, Maguire has only added four film credits to his name with the most prominent of those being his role in 2013 The Great Gatsby, and the final one being a voice acting appearance in The Boss Baby.
Not counting animated films, Maguire last acting part in a movie came in 2014’s Pawn Sacrifice, a chess biopic based where he plays Bobby Fischer, which holds a respectable yet unspectacular 71% rating on Rotten Tomatoes but that, despite Maguire praised performance, did terrible at the box office and with chess connoisseurs. The question then is simply, why? Well, although probably not the most enticing answer, the fact of the matter is that Maguire might just not be that interested in acting.
From the few interviews where he’s touched upon the topic since Spider-Man 3, he’s been sticking to his story that he is quite picky when it comes to choosing parts that interest him. Perhaps that’s why he started his own production company, Material Pictures, so that he could work on and contribute to the films that truly sparked his mind, although so far the biggest movies that have come out from that venture are The 5th Wave, Rock of Ages, and The Best of Enemies.
This elusive behavior makes it incredibly difficult to figure out if Maguire would be at all interested in suiting up as Spider-Man for No Way Home, or at least appear in any other cameo in his Peter Parker form. Maguire appears to be the type of man that is not swayed by money or fame, so unless joining Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland really strikes him as a fun idea, no one should be counting on a Spider-Man meetup in No Way Home.
However, all this would only be one side of the coin as Maguire personality comes with more implications than just those of a detached Hollywood actor. According to statements from the likes of Charlize Theron and James Franco years ago, Maguire is not necessarily the easiest person to work with on set, and although that reputation was built a decade ago, it still must have had some effect in the path the 46-year-old’s career took.
The real icing on the cake, and perhaps the most fascinating facet of Maguire are his gambling habits. See, Tobey Maguire has his own player profile up in poker circles, having attended several world championships amassing at least a couple of hundred thousand dollars for his participation; yet, it’s his reputation in the high-stakes underground poker scene that ended up having legal ramifications and featuring him in a movie.
During the late 2000s, a woman named Molly Bloom went on to become the lead organizer for a series of non-sanctioned Red Dead Redemption style poker tournaments that were born in the famous Hollywood Viper Room, which featured several celebrity players such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, Alex Rodriguez, and -of course- Tobey Maguire.
A fictionalized version of this underground poker scene is the focus of Aaron Sorkin’s Molly’s Game, based on the eponymous book written by Bloom, where the character “Player X” is said to be an amalgamation of many players, but most prominently the former Spider-Man. Molly’s Game is a fantastic and entertaining watch on its own that went on to collect several awards and nominations, but seeing it really lays the ground for what comes next.
Maguire was apparently a bit of a poker superhero, rumored to be cleaning the tables at these high-stakes games where hedge fund managers and other mega-rich individuals joined these celebrities, so his earnings -while unknown- are said to have possibly been in the millions. All this even forced Maguire into settling a legal dispute due to the nature of funds he won at some point.
All things considered, Maguire’s life is a bit fascinating, so after living the thrill of the kind of poker games depicted in Molly’s Game it’s not that hard to imagine why he often fails to find many films interesting. It was partly his boyish looks that got him the Spider-Man role in the first place, but since he’s now a fully grown man, it’d be amazing to see him bring a more adult demeanor to No Way Home as an older and wiser Peter Parker to balance out the teenage problems of Tom Holland's Spider-Man.
Garfield has repeatedly denied his return for Spider-Man, but the reason one doesn’t hear of Maguire doing the same is simply because he's opted to live a quieter life away from the spotlight. Maybe a No Way Home cameo could be what ends up opening new doors for Maguire to get those interesting roles he’s been missing, but if Sony and Marvel Studios really did bring Maguire back then maybe the MCU’s magic rivals that of Doctor Strange.