Tom Holland almost got rejected for ‘Spider-Man’ as his casting sparked clashes

Tom Holland became a known face around the globe after he made his big break with the role of Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

What many may be unaware of his how getting the 25-year-old on board the MCU as the teenage superhero stirred quite a bit of chaos for directors Joe and Anthony Russo.

Joe Russo told GQ in an interview that casting Spider-Man was a “unique experience” as they were working with Sony at the time and had to fight the company to bring Holland aboard.

“We talked with [president Kevin] Feige at Marvel about Holland and he got excited and then we went to Sony…” shared Joe.

“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,” he said.

“…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,” he continued.

Anthony also joined the discourse and said: “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.”

“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,” he added.