Tom Holland nearly wasn’t cast as Spider-Man

Tom Holland has played Spider-Man for the past six years – but was nearly not cast in the iconic superhero role.

In a new interview, Joe Russo – one half of the Russo brothers, who direct the current chapters in the Spider-Man franchise – explained that Sony – the studio that makes the movies – weren’t keen on Tom, now 24, at first.

‘We talked with [president Kevin] Feige at Marvel about Holland and he got excited and then we went to Sony…’ Joe told The Playlist. ‘And they were like, “Let’s think about it for a minute.”

‘We could tell we were meeting resistance from Sony. So we brought [Tom] back, brought him back, brought him back, and we were relentless in our pursuit of jamming him down the throat of the studio who owns this IP.

‘It came down to a fight, yet Sony just kept dragging their feet.’

Tom was first introduced to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, before he made his first appearance as the titular hero in Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Joe went on: ‘Coming into Civil War, Sony is looking at us going, “OK, so you guys have the Midas touch, here’s our [Spider-Man] IP.”

‘But, also, they were reticent, nervous, about handing off something that could ultimately cost them hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars down the line.’

Co-director Anthony Russo shared that Tom, who was a teenager at the time, also made the studio execs nervous.

‘It was the first time Spider-Man had ever been cast as an actual teenager, right? Which was very important to us; there was a distinct nervousness of casting a kid,’ he said.

Joe added: ‘There’s a universe where Tom Holland is the last great movie star coming in underneath the wire of disruption.

‘It takes a perfect storm of events to create a star: talent, timing, marketplace!’

Tom and co-stars Zendaya and Jacob Batalon revealed the title to the latest Spider-Man sequel last week.

The follow-up to 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home has officially been dubbed Spider-Man: No Way Home.

But keeping the name a secret was no easy task due to the leading man’s notoriously loose-lips.

Zendaya and Jacob teased Tom in the official announcement on Wednesday, telling the English actor behind Peter Parker he was an expert at spoiling things while they walked past a whiteboard with the title written on it.