Russo Brothers fought with Sony to cast Tom Holland as Spider-Man

The studio was also apparently skeptical about casting such a young actor as the web-slinging hero as Holland was just 19 when he nabbed the role.

Film directors Anthony and Joe Russo recently revealed that it was not a smooth-sailing journey for actor Tom Holland to land the lead role in the Spider-Man franchise.

As per Entertainment Weekly, the directors shared that they had to fight with Sony, which owns the film rights to Spider-Man, to cast Holland as Peter Parker (Spider-Man). While the directors and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige were very enthusiastic about Holland, the studio was more resistant to the choice.

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“We talked with Feige at Marvel about Holland and he got excited and then we went to Sony, ” Joe said in an interview with British GQ, as per Entertainment Weekly. Joe added, “And they were like, ‘Let’s think about it for a minute.’ We could tell we were meeting resistance from Sony. So we brought Holland back, brought him back, and we were relentless in our pursuit of jamming him down the throat of the studio who owns this IP. It came down to a fight, yet Sony just kept dragging their feet.” Joe further said that Sony was hesitant to give them control of Spider-Man franchise, and “nervous about handing off something that could ultimately cost them hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars down the line.”

“Sony’s reservations were: ‘Are we loaning it? Or are we giving it to them to help us reinvent it in a way that adds value for us?'” he continued.

The studio was also apparently skeptical about casting such a young actor as the web-slinging hero as Holland was just 19 when he nabbed the role.

“It was the first time Spider-Man had ever been cast as an actual teenager, right, which was very important to us; there was a distinct nervousness of casting a kid,” Anthony said. As Joe recalled, it was Holland’s screen test with Robert Downey Jr., which is already something of a legend, that finally won him the role.