Jake Johnson was convinced he was going to get replaced on 'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse' — even more than a year into production

spiderman into the spiderverse

Jake Johnson worked on "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" as the voice of Peter Parker for a year and a half before he was allowed to say he was in the movie.
He was convinced he was going to be replaced.
A big reason for the paranoia, he told Business Insider, was because he'd been replaced on voiceover jobs in the past.

Jake Johnson does a stellar job voicing Peter Parker in "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse," but he recently admitted that he thought he would be replaced.

Johnson said he had a wicked case of déjà vu when he noticed other cast members were getting their roles publicly announced in Sony's animated movie, while he still hadn't been given the okay to do so — despite having already worked on the movie for over a year and a half.

"I thought, 'C'mon man, I was born at night but not last night. I know what's happening here!'" Johnson told Business Insider. "I thought for sure I was getting replaced by some huge name that's in all the superhero movies."

And this wasn't a case of an actor with a fragile ego looking for some attention. Johnson had been replaced doing voiceover work in the past.

"I'm not going to name the names out of respect," Johnson said, "but I've done entire voiceovers for movies. Movies that have a voiceover throughout it. I've laid down the tracks with the directors, and then I found out later they were using that as a temp track. So that's part of the business. They hear the voice and something's not right and it's an easy fix. They have this rhythm and they are like, 'Now let's see if somebody else's voice sounds better.'"

Jake Johnson Getty Johnson said he was ecstatic when he got the role to voice Peter Parker in "Spider-Verse," and soon after began recording dialogue for the movie. He breathed a big sigh of relief a year and a half into the job when the studio announced to the public he was in the movie. But he wasn't close to being finished yet.

He had about another year before he was through recording lines.

"The monologue, 'My name is Peter B. Parker and I was bit by a radioactive spider,' I did that monologue probably 35 to 40 different times," Johnson said. "I would come back and they would say, 'Hey, we made a little tweak, we're doing the monologue again,' and I would just be like, here we go."

But constantly repeating Peter Parker lines for over two and a half years hasn't burned him out on playing the role. With the movie being an Oscar contender in the animation category, and the movie breaking the record for the biggest opening weekend ever for an animated released in December, Johnson hopes there will be more chances to play Parker.

"There are money jobs everywhere in this business but the reason I didn't want to get cut out of this movie is because I really hope to keep playing Peter," he said. "I like it. I really want to see another script. I really want to know what happens to him and MJ. And I also don't want to be in the writer's meetings, I want to see the script."

"Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" is currently playing in theaters.

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