How Tom Holland Basically Saved Spider-Man: Brand New Day From Being a Very Different Movie

Across a string of interviews about Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Tom Holland revealed a lot about the film, but the biggest thing he revealed is that he basically saved it from possibly being a very mediocre movie. He never said it in one place. If you put the pieces together from many different interviews, the next Spider-Man would have been way different if it weren't for Holland doing several very specific things at different points in time.

So there is a puzzle to piece together here, and I want to break down everything he did, from one uncomfortable phone call to the day he stopped production on a scene with Zendaya.

Tom Holland asked Sony to move Spider-Man: Brand New Day for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey

This all starts with both Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. They were originally set to start shooting on the exact same day, which was obviously an issue because Holland couldn't be in two places at once. Nolan really wanted him for The Odyssey, and most actors in that spot would just say no to the so-called side project. He is Spider-Man, after all. You don't risk the billion dollar franchise for a supporting role.

Holland did the opposite. As he told GQ: "So, I said to Chris, Chris Nolan, 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.'" He then called up Tom Rothman, the head of Sony, and asked the studio to move Spider-Man, a massive movie it expected to make a ton of money. And here's the kicker: Sony said yes. Holland even called it a tough pill to swallow for Sony.

The reason they said yes is the part I love. It was 100% respect for Holland, and the studio wants success for him as much as he wanted to be in this movie. But Nolan's reputation played its part too. Holland said he thinks one of the reasons Sony was happy to move is that Nolan has a reputation for not running five months over, so the studio wasn't going to lose Holland for two years, and that with another director it might have been a slightly different conversation. They were right. The Odyssey actually wrapped nine days early.

The delay brought in Destin Daniel Cretton and six months to develop the script

When Spider-Man moved, everybody complained online, of course, and we were worried that something bad had happened. But this was actually the best thing that could have happened for Sony and this movie. The delay opened a window to bring in Destin Daniel Cretton, the director of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Wonder Man, who at one point was supposed to direct Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.

Holland said this himself. "The Odyssey almost saved Spider-Man because we wouldn't have had Destin," he said, explaining that Cretton wouldn't have been ready to make the movie when they were ready to go, and that they wouldn't have had the six month period to develop the script with him. Holland said he truly believes they made the best version of any Spider-Man movie going, and that while it was a tough pill to swallow for Sony, he thinks in hindsight the studio is very grateful it happened.

So the director, the proper time to write the script, really the whole quality of the movie: Holland is putting all of it on the delay. Think about how many times in the Multiverse Saga it felt like movies were being written on the floor while the cameras rolled. Think about how many changes Captain America: Brave New World went through. This movie actually got real prep time, because Holland went and made a Greek epic with Christopher Nolan.

Tom Holland did "sneaky research" in fan comments

The schedule is only one part of this. That extra time didn't just buy them a director; it gave Holland room to do some homework on how to make the best Spider-Man movie ever. And here is something that should be kind of impossible for a movie this big at a studio this big. Holland read comments. Not comics, although I'm sure he has read a bunch of those too, but comments online.

In the gap between Spider-Man: No Way Home and Brand New Day, he went online and did what he literally called sneaky research, digging through what fans were saying they wanted out of the next Spider-Man film. He went through Reddit, X, YouTube, Instagram, everywhere. He told LadBible he had been actively sifting through the internet trying to understand what fans want from a Spider-Man movie, and that it had been his driving force in the pitch meetings. In another interview he said he put together a vibe of what people were looking for, went to Marvel and told them what he thought they should be doing, and that he thinks that's exactly what they did.

It wasn't a one time thing, either. Holland said he thinks the producers were at times absolutely sick of him, but that it's really important because they make these movies for the fans. He is an absolute legend for this. He didn't sit down and type out the Spider-Man 4 script by any means, but make no mistake, he had real creative pull over where this story went: the new suit, the tone, the direction of everything. He used the fans as his ammunition in those meetings, and he had the leverage to move the needle.

As someone who has spent years talking about what we want from these characters, I love this a lot. I love that it is actually the person in the suit who is down there reading what us fans are saying online.

Christopher Nolan's set changed how Holland approached Spider-Man 4

The fan wish list wasn't the only thing Holland brought into those pitch meetings. On the Nolan set he picked up something completely different, and this is what takes it from a fan service movie into something with actual backbone. Working with Nolan apparently rewired how Holland thinks about movies. He described going from the Marvel machine, where sometimes things get figured out on the day, to a director like Nolan, who has every answer locked before anyone steps on set. He said, "This is how it's supposed to feel."

He didn't keep that to himself. He brought that energy straight back to Sony and Marvel and, in his words, started to lay down the law. He said they were not going to come to set and figure it out, and that they needed to know why they were making this movie beyond the fact that it's Spider-Man 4 and these films make loads of money. Then came the line: "Why are we making this movie?" That is not something a big studio always wants its lead actor asking out loud, but he did it anyway.

I want to be clear about who he was pushing, because I've seen this misreported a little bit. He wasn't lecturing Destin Daniel Cretton. Holland said Cretton was super instrumental in it, and that it was great to constantly be calling up the studio and producers Amy Pascal and Rachel O'Connor, whom he said he loves, and telling them this is how Nolan was doing it and how he thought they should be doing it. So he wasn't bullying the crew or the director. It was the star and the director teaming up to push the studio to take Spider-Man 4 seriously. Put those two things together and he was in those meetings with the fans' wish list in one hand and Nolan's playbook in the other, using every bit of his leverage to make the next Spider-Man movie amazing instead of just big.

Holland and Zendaya stopped a scene that wasn't working

Then Holland took it a step further and shut down production for a day. This moment tells you everything about how much he cares about this movie. They had already shot his side of a scene and were shooting Zendaya's side when something felt off. On a podcast with Amy Poehler, Holland said he would never dream of saying this to an actress he wasn't with, but he asked Zendaya whether she thought the scene was working, and she said she didn't think it was working at all. He asked the producers, and they said no too.

They took it to Cretton, and I really love this part. Holland made sure to say Cretton didn't get defensive, calling him so calm that nothing can throw him off. Holland said Cretton told everyone they could go home, then sat down to rewrite the scene with the writer, Justin Kuritzkes. They came in the next day and reshot it, and Holland said he is so glad they did because it sings in the movie. Kuritzkes is the writer of Challengers, which starred Zendaya, so they didn't just patch the scene; they had a heavy hitter fix it overnight.

Think about what that requires: a star secure enough to admit a scene isn't landing, a costar honest enough to agree out loud, and a director humble enough to throw away a day's work without ego getting in the way. That is not how a movie chasing a paycheck operates. That's how a movie that actually cares operates, and I truly love that.

The Odyssey was the tool, and Tom Holland picked it up

All of these stories together are one big story of how Holland had an insane impact on what Spider-Man: Brand New Day became. The gamble to do The Odyssey and make that phone call bought the time. The time landed Cretton and room for the script. The fan research aimed the movie at what fans actually want, and the Nolan discipline made Holland go to war with the studio over the why. That same standard gave him the spine to stop a scene cold and fix it. Every one of those traces back to one actor deciding this movie was going to be amazing.

That's why I don't think saying The Odyssey saved Spider-Man is quite the right way to put it, even though Holland kind of said it himself. The Odyssey was a tool, and Tom Holland is the one who picked it up and used it.

Do you think The Odyssey saved Spider-Man: Brand New Day, or was it really Tom Holland all along?