Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
Not all heroes wear capes, and some of them don’t wear suits at all while saving the day. That’s what happened to famed Spider-Man Tom Holland, who revealed in a recent GQ cover story that he pushed back filming on Spider-Man: Brand New Day and in the process “almost saved” the movie. Originally, the fourth Spider-Man and Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey were planned to shoot on the exact same dates. “I said to Chris, like, ‘Look, I want to do this movie, but if I’m going to do it, I’m going to have to call Sony and have a very uncomfortable conversation,’” Holland revealed. But, spoiler alert, Sony acquiesced. “I think one of the reasons why Sony were happy to move is because Chris has that reputation of ‘This movie isn’t going to go five months over, and we aren’t actually going to lose Tom for two years,’” Holland said.
The unintended consequence of pushing the Marvel movie back was that it made a few upgrades possible. For one, the franchise had the ability to hire director Destin Daniel Cretton, who would have been busy otherwise. “We wouldn’t have had the six-month period to develop the script with Destin to get it to a place where it is now,” Holland said. “And I truly believe that we’ve made the best version of any Spider-Man movie going. So while it was a tough pill to swallow for Sony, I think in hindsight, they’re very grateful that it happened.”
Holland also took away a lot from working with Nolan. “I think coming from the Marvel space, and I think this will upset Marvel a little bit — his level of preparation is unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” Holland revealed. “There’s not a single question you can ask him that he can’t answer immediately.” With that in mind, Holland made some demands. “I was really able to lay down the law and say, ‘We are not going to come to set and figure it out,’” he said. “‘We need to know why we are making this movie beyond the fact that it’s Spider-Man 4 and they make loads of money and we’re going to just have a big summer. Why are we making this movie?’ And Destin was super instrumental in that, but it was just really great to constantly be calling up the studio and [producers] Amy [Pascal] and Rachel [O’Connor], who I love, and be like, ‘Well, Chris is doing it this way. This is how I think we should be doing it.’” It’s always nice to see someone make the superhero machine treat their blockbuster movie like, well, a blockbuster movie.
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