Sorry, folks. Spider-Man didn’t ride a horse, play with pandas, or take a nap next to the Great Wall. The posters for China’s release of Spider-Man: Homecoming are a hoax.
Several posters were making the rounds this week that put Spider-Man with some of China’s biggest tourist attractions, including hanging with the Terracotta Army and taking a selfie next to The Bund in Shanghai. The images surfaced on Reddit and later showed up on several news sites, but it wasn’t clear where they had come from.
The answer would be Sony Pictures… if they were real, which they’re not. Even though Spider-Man: Homecoming was made in partnership with Marvel Studios, it’s Sony’s film, so they’re in charge of marketing for it. However, Sony Pictures has confirmed to us that the images are fan art, and not from the company. Which is kind of a shame, as they are delightful:
A few of them seem a little questionable—mostly the one where Spider-Man is sailing along a river in a bamboo hat—but the others seem to fit actor Tom Holland’s Spidey style. I don’t have a doubt in the world that his Peter Parker would totally cuddle with pandas at the first available opportunity.
Spider-Man: Homecoming hits theaters in China September 8.
