Why is Doctor Octopus a woman in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse? It was just a whim

During the quarantine period, Comicbook held a special online viewing party, and the theme of the latest issue was Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Executive producers Chris Miller, Phil Lord, and co-director and screenwriter Rodney Rothman sat together and talked about many interesting stories behind the scenes of the film.

This includes explaining why Doctor Octopus is a female in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Most Spider-Man works (whether comics or movies) portray Doctor Octopus as a male villain named Otto Octavious, but the animated film eventually created a female version of Doctor Octopus named Olivia Octavious.

According to screenwriter Rothman, his assistant director Bob Persichetti and Kathryn Hahn, who voiced Olivia, became friends through their children, and it was Bob who came up with the idea of ​​letting Kathryn voice the character and changing the gender of Doctor Octopus. In addition, the male version of Doctor Octopus was still used in the early drafts of the script, and he was a fat and strong man (similar to the protagonist in "The Big Lebowski").

Bob's suggestion turned out to be a good idea. Dr. Olivia in "Into the Spider-Verse" is also one of the highlights of the movie. The success of this gender change operation is largely related to the theme of the movie. After all, the plot of this work is related to the distortion of time and space, which makes the character's gender change reasonable and not so inconsistent.