The Home Depot – Spider-Man title speculation not far from home

Spider-Man stars Tom Holland, Zendaya and Jacob Batalon spun a web of lies this week while teasing the title of their next Marvel film — which was finally announced for real Wednesday.

As fans eagerly awaited new details about the upcoming third instalment in the superhero franchise, cast members trolled them on social media with various fake names piggybacking on those of the first two films: Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home.

On Instagram and Twitter, Emmy winner Zendaya jokingly disclosed that the highly anticipated sequel would be called Spider-Man: Home Slice. Meanwhile, Holland and Batalon’s faux entries were the E.T.-inspired Spider-Man: Phone Home and Spider-Man: Home-Wrecker, respectively.

The official title — later revealed by Sony Pictures — is Spider-Man: No Way Home. The studio released a cheeky video Wednesday morning in which Holland, Zendaya and Batalon lamented being fed false information by their employers to avoid spoilers.

“Name one thing I’ve actually spoiled,” a frustrated Holland — who has earned a reputation over the years for spilling the beans — says in the clip.

“The last movie title,” Zendaya replies, before the camera zooms in on a white board bearing the actual name of the latest instalment.

Jokes aside, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Peter Parker (Holland), MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Batalon) also unveiled a series of stills from the film, which will swing into theatres later this year. Not to be out-trolled, a band of clever Marvel enthusiasts got in on the fun by pitching their own working titles for the project.

Among the most popular ideas were Spider-Man: Home Depot and Spider-Man: The Third, adopting the ogre-green font of 2007’s Shrek the Third. One person opted to bring back the simple but effective Spider-Man 3 starring original web-slinger Tobey Maguire.

And multiple Twitter users couldn’t help but merge two of their favourite Marvel properties: Sony’s Spider-Man saga and the hit Disney Plus series WandaVision.

A fan-made poster for Spider-Man: One More Sleep Until WandaVision Episode 8 quickly racked up more than 800 likes on the platform.

Before Sony’s big reveal Wednesday, many speculated that Holland would be the one to announce the real title while appearing on Tuesday night’s episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Needless to say, he didn’t. But he did debunk rumours about potential appearances from previous Spider-Man stars Maguire and Andrew Garfield.

“It would be amazing if they were (in the film) because they haven’t told me that yet,” Holland told Fallon. “I am Spider-Man, and I’ve read the script from beginning to the end, so it’ll be a miracle if they could have kept that from me. But at the moment, there is no cameo from the two boys.”

— Los Angeles Times