A phone call with drunk Tom Holland helped save Spider-Man's relationship with the MCU
Over the summer, we all collectively took a break from actual bad news to get overly worked up about the future of Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It all started when talks broke down between Sony (which owns the move rights to the web-head) and Marvel Boss Kevin Feige (who, along with his corporate masters at Disney, own the movie rights to everything else in the world). Supposedly, Feige tried to convince Sony to hand over some of the financial responsibilities involved in making Spider-Man movies, giving Marvel a larger share of the profits. Sony understandably rejected this, seeing as how Spider-Man: Far From Home was the studio’s highest-grossing film ever, and so any hopes of seeing Tom Holland’s Spider swing by for another Marvel movie—or even for a future Spidey movie to make good on the teases about him becoming the next Tony Stark—were effectively shot down just like poor Uncle Ben.
After the internet loudly came to the defense of Disney, a massive corporation that absolutely does not need anyone’s help (for the record, Sony was right to be wary of letting its most valuable property get swallowed up by Mickey Mouse’s insatiable maw), the two studios managed to come together and work out a deal for a third Sony/Disney Spider-Man movie that will be released in 2021. Holland, who is also once again free to appear in future MCU movies, was apparently instrumental in making that happen, and last night he revealed to Jimmy Kimmel that all he had to do was get drunk and answer a call from Disney boss Bob Iger.
In the clip (the relevant part starts just before 10 minutes in), Holland says he was at a pub with his family when he got a call from Iger, who said that he thought there was a way to make a deal happen. Holland was “three pints in” and hadn’t eaten, but despite admitting that he was drunk, he took the call and may or may not have “weeped” as he talked to Iger about Spider-Man’s future. As Holland notes to Kimmel, he’s just an actor, so he really shouldn’t be asked to make hugely important decisions like this for Sony and Disney, but a more cynical mind might point out that it makes perfect sense for Iger to appeal to Holland. After all, he’s very likable, the MCU made him a big star, and he clearly wants his character to stay in that universe, so making sure he wanted a deal to work out was probably very persuasive (especially given the amount of social media pressure that was being put on Sony to back down from its very understandable position).
Anyway, it all worked out and there was never any bad news ever again.