Tom Holland Asked Sony to Delay ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Filming – Here’s Why

Tom Holland is having quite the summer. Between wrapping up press for one of the year’s most secretive blockbusters and gearing up for his return as Spider-Man, the actor has barely had a moment to catch his breath, and this week’s late-night circuit made that abundantly clear.

‘The Odyssey’ has taken over ‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’ for a full week, with Holland, Matt Damon, Zendaya, and Lupita Nyong’o each getting their own night on the couch ahead of the film’s release. Holland kicked things off as the lead guest, sitting down with Fallon for an interview and a game dubbed Cyclops Beer Pong, a nod to one of the film’s most memorable creatures.

During that appearance, Holland opened up about just how far he was willing to go to be part of Christopher Nolan’s passion project, revealing that he had Sony move filming on ‘Spider-Man, Brand New Day’ so he could commit to ‘The Odyssey‘ first. It is a decision that speaks to how much the actor wanted in on Nolan’s mythic retelling, even before he fully understood what the film actually was.

That lack of clarity, it turns out, was very much by design. Holland admitted the only thing he actually knew about the project going in was that it involved a Cyclops, a detail that lines up with just how tightly Nolan has guarded the plot of ‘The Odyssey’ from the very beginning. The film’s shroud of secrecy became something of a running joke throughout production, fueling months of fan speculation about what Nolan was actually building.

That mystery reportedly extended even to the people meant to be advising Holland on his career. According to the actor, his own agents initially believed the project was either a vampire film or a space movie before learning the truth, which tracks with the wider rumor mill at the time. Reports had circulated that ‘The Odyssey’ could have been a vampire period piece, a reboot of the 1983 film ‘Blue Thunder,’ or even an adaptation of the television series ‘The Prisoner,’ all of which Nolan later shot down once casting and details began to surface.

Despite going in mostly blind, Holland made it clear there was never any hesitation once Nolan actually offered him the role. He said yes immediately, a response that fits with how the actor has spoken about the director elsewhere, crediting Nolan’s efficient and highly organized approach to filmmaking as something he wanted to bring back with him to the ‘Spider-Man’ set.

That admiration is part of why Holland was willing to make an uncomfortable phone call to Sony in the first place. Rather than juggling both projects at once, he asked the studio to push the start of ‘Brand New Day’ back by roughly six months so he could dedicate himself fully to ‘The Odyssey.’ Sony ultimately agreed, and Holland has since suggested the delay worked out in the studio’s favor, since it gave director Destin Daniel Cretton extra time to develop the ‘Spider-Man’ script before cameras started rolling.

The timing lines up neatly with everything else happening in Holland’s world right now. ‘The Odyssey’ opens in theaters on July 17, bringing Homer’s epic to IMAX screens using new film technology, with a sprawling cast that includes Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, and Holland himself as Telemachus, Odysseus’ son. Just weeks later, Holland returns to theaters yet again as Peter Parker in ‘Spider-Man, Brand New Day,’ marking a rare stretch where the actor headlines two major releases back to back.

For fans who have followed the buildup to ‘The Odyssey’ for months, Holland’s Fallon appearance offers a fun bit of insight into just how little the cast knew heading into production, and just how much trust they placed in Nolan regardless. It also reinforces something Holland has said in other interviews, that working alongside Nolan changed the way he approached his own franchise once he got back to Queens.

With ‘The Odyssey’ arriving in theaters this week and ‘Brand New Day’ close behind it, Holland’s willingness to rearrange his entire schedule for Nolan is looking like it paid off on both fronts.

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