Imagine applying for a job – one of the most important jobs, with the potential to change every facet of your life – and then finding out whether you got the gig or not by opening up Instagram? As impossible as this might be to believe, that’s how Tom Holland discovered that he had been chosen by Marvel Studios to be the MCU’s Spider-Man in Joe and Anthony Russo’s Captain America: Civil War. It started back in 2015. It’s expected to continue through the announced Spider-Man 4, and likely through the upcoming Avengers movies. But the journey started on social media, which cracks me up.
I covered this process pretty extensively in my Spider-Man book With Great Power, which documented the Hollywood history of Marvel’s webslinger. But Tom Holland brought the story up again while appearing as a guest on Dish Podcast. He was asked by the hosts about his time joining the MCU, and Holland explained that the auditions for the coveted role started out as a lark, as something he never dreamed he’d actually get. In time, as he started getting called back, and started reading with Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans, he started to believe.
On the day that he found out that he’d secured the role of Spider-Man, Tom Holland wasn’t told by Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige or Sony Pictures President Amy Pascal. No, he found out online. As Holland recalled:
I wasn’t called, I didn’t have an email. I came home, and I was strolling through Instagram. Marvel had posted a picture of Spider-Man, and it said something like, ‘Go to our Website to find out who the next Spider-Man is.’ Now at this point, I’d been waiting maybe 6 weeks to find out whether I got it. And obviously at that point, you go, ‘I didn’t get it.’ Because they would have called me. They’d have a LITTLE bit of respect. (laughs)
Needless to say, Tom Holland did get the role. He obviously aced his series of auditions, which he and Zendaya had a good laugh over when they recently rewatched them. He was chosen to play a very young version of Peter Parker in the growing MCU. That day, as Holland continued, he learned his fate through social media, explaining:
I remember slamming my computer down and sort of sitting there. I couldn’t quite believe what was happening. I ran downstairs. I was going absolutely crazy. … My brother Harry, who’s the really tech savvy one in the house, was like, ‘There’s something a bit fishy going on here.’ Because it was also when Sony had just been hacked, and that whole controversy was happening.
Ah yes, the Sony hacks of 2014. What a mess that created. And now we can add the uncertainty to Tom Holland over his ability to play Spider-Man on screen. Thankfully, the head of Sony finally put in a phone call to Holland, he started his journey, and it led him to Spider-Man: No Way Home, where he shared the screen with the two previous live-action Spider-Man actors, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. Here, drink in how amazing their shared chemistry was, and is:
We will have much more from Tom Holland through his upcoming Spider-Man movies, though we have to wait for 2026 (at the very least) to see more adventures happen.
