Rothman contributed the latter when discussing Spider-Verse’s Doc Ock. Most comic books depict the character as a man named Otto Octavious, but the film decided to make the character a female by the name of Olivia Octavious instead.
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Rothman explained to fans the reason this happened. According to him, his co-director, Bob Persichetti, was friends with Olivia’s voice actor, Kathryn Hahn, through their kids. So he pitched the idea of making Otto a girl. The early drafts of the script still had male Doctor Octopus, one that was a “Big Lebowski type dude.”
Persichetti’s decision ultimately turned out to be a good one. Spider-Verse’s reveal of Olivia as Earth 1610’s version of Doctor Octopus was one of the movie’s highlights. The twist worked well because it played off the movie’s dimension-hopping plotline, and thus made the genderswap believable, and not something that felt like it was done on a whim — even if it was.
Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse is available now on digital, Blu-Ray, DVD, and Netflix.
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