After This Movie Bombed, Tobey Maguire Vanished for 7 Years
By 2014, Tobey Maguire had gone from Spider-Man megastar to something of a Hollywood ghost — and it all seemed to fall apart after one film: Pawn Sacrifice.
Maguire produced and starred in the Cold War-era chess drama, playing American prodigy Bobby Fischer opposite Liev Schreiber's Boris Spassky. The film, directed by Edward Zwick (Blood Diamond), had Oscar-bait written all over it: intense subject matter, a tortured genius lead, and a real-life international showdown. But despite the ambition, it tanked.
Pawn Sacrifice made just $5.6 million at the domestic box office. After that? Maguire all but vanished from live-action roles for seven years.
In a 2014 interview with Variety, Maguire said the producing path started because, frankly, he wasn't getting many calls.
"I had some time on my hands," he said. "It wasn't like I was acting in movie after movie. I just started going, 'All right, let me find things that I want to develop or try to build into movies that I want to make, because I'm not seeing scripts I want to do.'"
Between 2008 and 2013, Maguire had only four lead roles and a quick cameo in Tropic Thunder. Then came Pawn Sacrifice, which was supposed to be his big return. Zwick admitted it was a tough sell from day one:
"I don't have to tell you how many serious adult movies of any kind of intellectual ambition the studios are making right now."
After the flop, Maguire stepped back. From 2014 to 2021, his only acting credit was voicing the dad in The Boss Baby (2017). Behind the scenes, he stayed busy, producing six films including The 5th Wave and The Best of Enemies, but his face was off the big screen.
Then in 2021, he made his return — and in true Maguire fashion, he did it on his terms. He played a pale, unhinged Old Hollywood freak in Damien Chazelle's Babylon, and stepped back into the Spidey suit in Spider-Man: No Way Home.