Spider-Man is speaking out at D23 Expo 2019.
Things haven’t been easy lately for actor Tom Holland. He’s had one of the worst weeks an actor could have after the unthinkable happened: news broke that Disney and Sony failed to renegotiate their 2015 deal.
That landmark agreement allowed Holland’s Sony-owned Spider-Man to appear in movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, earning money for Sony while Marvel maintained creative input. If a new deal really isn’t being negotiated, it means that Spider-Man is leaving the MCU.
In other words, Holland’s world got flipped upside down. His future with both Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures was called into question, and his millions of adoring fans wondered why he wasn’t speaking out about the situation. One would imagine that Holland, a longtime Spider-Man fan, would be devastated over the Disney-Sony divorce — and apparently, they’d be mostly right.
Holland finally broke his silence about the studio split during D23 Expo on Saturday, August 24. Taking the stage to promote his upcoming movie Onward, a Pixar animated flick also featuring Marvel favorite Chris Pratt, Holland admitted that he’s been having a rough time since the news dropped, and he’s trying to focus on what matters most.
Though Holland didn’t say much about the corporate spat, the message he did deliver to his fans was an emotional one:
“It’s been a crazy week, but I want you to know I am grateful from the bottom of my heart, and I love you 3,000.”
The 23-year-old actor’s candid admission is both refreshing and heartbreaking, and his mention that he’s genuinely thankful for his fans and for the opportunity to play Spider-Man over the years is enough to make anyone shed a tear or two.
After the presentation at D23, Holland spoke with Entertainment Weekly about leaving the MCU, promising that he’ll keep stepping into the Spidey suit for as long as he can and continue making the franchise as great as it can be. He told the magazine,
“Basically, we’ve made five great movies. It’s been five amazing years. I’ve had the time of my life. Who knows what the future holds? But all I know is that I’m going to continue playing Spider-Man and having the time of my life. It’s going to be so fun, however we choose to do it.”
He added optimistically,
“The future for Spider-Man will be different, but it will be equally as awesome and amazing, and we’ll find new ways to make it even cooler.”
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, who produced both Homecoming and Far From Home, also addressed the situation, echoing Holland with his own optimistic viewpoint. He said,
“[What] I’m feeling about Spider-Man [is] gratitude and joy. We got to make five films within the MCU with Spider-Man: two standalone films and three with the Avengers. It was a dream that I never thought would happen. It was never meant to last forever. We knew there was a finite amount of time that we’d be able to do this, and we told the story we wanted to tell, and I’ll always be thankful for that.”
Yeah, but tell that to Far From Home’s cliffhanger ending.
In a perfect world, Holland would have never needed to address the Disney-Sony breakup because it never would have happened. If all had gone the way everyone truly wanted it to go, the two companies would have been able to reach an agreement to keep Spider-Man in the MCU.
Far From Home served as the conclusion for Marvel’s Phase 3, and considering how much emphasis the movie placed on Spider-Man as a successor to Tony Stark, many were pondering the character’s place in the upcoming Phase 4 and beyond.
A third Spider-Man movie continuing Peter Parker’s story felt inevitable, but now that the character’s connections to the MCU have apparently been severed, no one knows what that movie is going to look like. Before the news broke, it felt like Holland’s Spider-Man was going to avoid the same fate as Andrew Garfield’s iteration of the character, and would get to complete his trilogy and then some. But it looks those assumptions were wrong.
There’s no telling what will happen for Holland’s Spider-Man next, but one thing’s for sure: no matter what, fans will be telling the actor that they love him 3,000 for years to come.
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