Captain America: Civil War broke ground when it introduced a new Spider-Man to the MCU, but the movie was very close to not having the wall-crawler appear at all. As it turns out, if Spider-Man was a no go, Stark would have recruited another insect-based superhero, Ant-Man, on his team.
Co-writer Stephen McFeely explains:
"[Stark] would recruit somebody else… He probably recruits Ant Man would be that idea. We had a section where you could recruit somebody."
In the movie, Stark recruits Peter by popping up in Aunt May's apartment to surprise him. Recruiting Ant-Man would have admittedly been less spectacular:
"I believe he was watching his daughter play soccer. It wasn't very good."
A lot of people consider the deal between Marvel and Sony to share Spider-Man as "historic" and it made a lot more sense that Tony would recruit Peter instead of Scott Lang. After all, Scott Lang has proven himself not to be a fan of Tony Stark either:
For now, we're all enjoying a Spider-Man that is very present in the MCU with spinoff movies careful collaborations between Sony and Marvel Studios, Let's just hope that Tom Holland's Spider-Man gets to play with his actual villains like Venom in the future.
The Spider-Man: Homecoming sequel comes out July 5, 2019. Ant-Man and the Wasp comes out July 5 this year.
Source: ComicBookMovie
See Also: Spider-Man: Homecoming 2 Casting A Gender Non-Conforming High School Character
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