Tom Holland Once Said Playing Spider-Man in His 30s Would Be Bad, but Now Reveals ‘I Could’ve Been Trying to Leverage Sony’ for a Better Deal: ‘A Strategy to Create Fear’

Tom Holland made headlines in 2021 when he told GQ magazine that “if I’m playing Spider-Man after I’m 30, I’ve done something wrong.” Well, not only is Holland officially 30 right now but he’s also got a new “Spider-Man” movie, “Brand New Day,” opening in theaters July 31 and does not have any immediate plans to stop playing the web-slinger. So is Holland eating his words? Not exactly.

“It’s funny, I saw that quote pop up somewhere recently and I kind of reeled, because I was trying to remember what I meant,” Holland recently told GQ magazine for the publication’s summer cover story on Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” adaptation.

“I think the point of it is that I would love to pass the baton on, and I haven’t achieved that yet,” the actor explained. “It’s definitely something that we talk about a lot at the studio. So maybe I need to change the quote to 37. I could also have been trying to leverage Sony and scare them into thinking I wasn’t going to do ‘Spider-Man 4’ now that I had a new deal on the horizon. So I don’t know what it could have been. It could’ve been part of a strategy to create fear.”

Holland concluded, “I think the truth is that playing Spider-Man has been the joy of my life. I now kind of stand on the plinth of like, I’ll do it for as long as they’ll have me.”