After it was announced that Sony and Disney had come to a new agreement, Marvel fans around the world found themselves able to breath a collective sigh of relief. Not only will Spider-Man‘s next movie now be under the care of Marvel Studios and take place in the MCU, but we can rest assured that Tom Holland’s web-slinger has a bright future ahead of him on the silver screen.
For a while there, though, it wasn’t looking too good for the hero and fans were fearing the worst. But thankfully, Holland himself stepped up to save the day, with recent reports indicating that he was instrumental in getting Spidey back into the MCU. And now, while speaking with Jimmy Kimmel, the actor revealed how it all went down.
“I saved Spider-Man,” Holland said with a smile before adding, “no I didn’t. We were at D23, which is the big Disney convention and the news had come out and I was obviously devastated. I was really upset, and my mom and all my friends were there taking Marvel pictures and I was like (frowns) not allowed to be in them and it was awful.”
“It was not the best day, so anyway I asked if I could get Bob’s email cuz I just wanted to say thank you. I wanted to say this has been an amazing 5 years of my life. Thank you for changing my life in the best way and I hope that we can work together in the future, and I got his email and I sent him the email and then he responded very quickly saying ‘I’d love to jump on the phone with you at some point, when are you free?’
Continuing on, Tom explained that the CEO eventually called him, but the phone call came when he wasn’t completely sober.
“And you don’t give Bob Iger like a schedule, you’re like ‘whenever Bob.’ So like 2 or 3 days go by and then my family and I went to the Pub Quiz in our local town. We’re doing a quiz and I’m like 3 pints in, right? I haven’t eaten much, and I get a phone call from an unknown number, and I have a feeling like ‘this is Bob Iger, but I’m drunk’. So anyway so my Dad’s like ‘just take the call you’ll be fine’.
So anyway I answer the call and I’m like ‘hey Bob’. I basically said ‘thank you for the opportunity’ and then he said ‘there is a world where we can make this work’, and then there was a bunch of phone calls back and forth from Tom Rothman, he was really instrumental in the process and it was really interesting for me to have these two studio heads like ‘what do you think?’ I’m like ‘I don’t know I’m an actor’.”
Admitting that he “weeped” on the call with Iger, Holland further explained his emotional state at the time, saying:
“Yeah, no I was really emotional because I felt like it was all coming to an end. I don’t know. We had a really good plan with what we were going to do with Sony. The future of Spider-Man was still very bright, but it would’ve been a shame to take him out of the MCU, you know, that’s where he belongs and we’ve built such a strong character in that world and it would’ve been a shame to lose that, but I’m just really glad that we managed to work it out.”
If you’ll recall, a lot of people were surprised by how calm the star seemed following the Disney/Sony split, but it seems that’s because he knew he was going to do his best to fix things and keep Spider-Man in the MCU. After all, he’s said in the past that his Marvel family feels like home. And no one likes being far from home, right?
As Tom told Jimmy Kimmel, the MCU is really where Peter Parker belongs and thankfully, Spider-Man 3 will now be produced by Marvel Studios and Holland will show up in at least one other MCU movie following the threequel. And given that WGTC has heard that it’s very likely this new deal could be extended come 2022, we imagine the fan favorite actor will be swinging around the Marvel Cinematic Universe for a while yet.