Tom Holland has revealed that he convinced Sony to postpone filming Spider-Man: Brand New Day so he could star in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.
In a new wide-ranging interview with GQ magazine, Holland recalled having a “very uncomfortable conversation” with Sony Pictures president Tom Rothman last summer to make the schedule change happen, and it worked.
“I think one of the reasons Sony was willing to move on was because Chris had a reputation for saying, ‘This movie’s not going to be extended by five months and we’re not going to actually lose Tom for two years,'” the 30-year-old British actor explained.
“With any other manager, it might have been a slightly different conversation,” he added.
Production on “The Odyssey,” in which Holland plays Odysseus’ son Telemachus, began on schedule and finished nine days early. He immediately filmed his latest Spider-Man sequel.
Holland said he felt the Marvel and Sony movie was “saved” because filming delays gave director Destin Daniel Cretton time to join the superhero project.
“I truly believe we’ve made the best version of the Spider-Man movie to date,” Holland boasted. “So it was a tough pill for Sony to swallow, but in hindsight I think they’re very grateful that it happened.”
While talking about The Odyssey, Holland explained how working with Nolan, 55, was different from past Marvel experiences.
“I think coming from the Marvel world, this is going to upset Marvel a little bit. His level of preparation is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Holland said of the two-time Oscar-winning director.
She added: “There’s not a question you can ask him that he can’t answer right away. He has a very simple way of working. Sometimes he uses fancy camera tricks and stuff, but he really comes on set and finds the shot.”
Later in the interview, Holland revealed that he took several years off from acting before filming The Odyssey and Spider-Man 4 because he was “overworked” and felt he “needed to grow in his personal life.”
“And I wanted to be able to stay engaged with what I was doing,” the “Uncharted” star continued. “We feel very lucky to be doing what we do, but the moment it becomes a chore, something has gone wrong.
“I don’t know if there was ever a moment where I doubted I was in love, but I felt a little bit like I wasn’t doing my best job because I was just going to work.”
Holland’s rumored wife, Zendaya, also appears in both films, but according to GQ, there are no scenes of the couple together in Odyssey.
Still, Holland said, “I just wanted to be there, so I went to set up her first day on the job.”
Elsewhere in the GQ article, Holland’s co-stars Robert Pattinson and Matt Damon open up about their grueling experiences on the set of The Odyssey, which was filmed over 91 days in six countries.
“The running joke among the crew was that there was no easy spot,” said Damon, 55. “Every time I went somewhere, I thought, ‘Iceland would be easier,’ and then it rained from the sides and it was super cold. Iceland was like, ‘Yeah, is it easier?’ Hey, get me a beer. ”
Damon said filming on a Los Angeles studio lot was similarly challenging, as the cast had to deal with “a lot of water being sprayed on them” by two jet engines.
“So it was kind of a fitting ending,” Damon said. “Even in a controlled environment, it was cold, wet and a little miserable.”
Pattinson, 40, said he noticed the cast and crew looked “exhausted” when he arrived on set more than a month after filming began.
“We started a third of the way through the movie, and by that point they had already been to (two) countries and people were just… I mean, at the end of every day, people were hurting,” he revealed.
“Odyssey” will be released on July 17th, and “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” will be released on July 31st.
