Back in October, as I was processing my grief over Tom Holland losing his floppy tresses, I mentioned that Bob Iger gave Tom full credit for keeping the Spider-Man franchise with Marvel. I was impressed with both men for remembering the fans and honoring their wishes. You can watch Iger’s interview with Jimmy Kimmel here. Well, Tom appeared on Kimmel recently and told a slightly different version of the story – on that involved a drunk, emotional Tom and a whole lot of confusion as to why the heads of Disney and Sony were asking his opinion on the matter.

The video is queued up to the Spider-Man discussion. I’ll transcribe below:

Bob Iger is the CEO of the Disney Corporation. He runs everything, really. He was telling us a story. Sony, which owns the rights to Spider-Man, was pulling Spider-Man out of the Disney universe. And you, somehow, according to Bob, smoothed that over. Is that correct?
I wouldn’t say it was entirely was my doing. We were at D23, which is the big Disney convention. The news had come out and I was obviously devastated. All my Marvel friends were taking, like, Marvel pictures, and I was (sad face) not allowed to be in them – it was awful. It was not the best day. I asked if I could get Bob’s email, cuz I just wanted to say, ‘thank you.’ I just wanted to say, ‘this has been an amazing five years of my life. Thank you for changing my life and I hope we can work together again in the future.’ So I sent him the email and he responded very quickly. He said, ‘I’d love to jump on the phone with you at some point, when are you free?’ And you don’t give Bob Iger a schedule, you’re like, ‘Whenever, Bob!’

Two, three days go by and then my family and I went to the pub quiz, at our local town. We’re doing a quiz and I’m three pints in. I haven’t eaten much, and I get a phone call from an unknown number. And I have a feeling ‘I think this is Bob Iger… but I’m drunk.’ So my dad’s like, ‘Just take the call, you’ll be fine!’ I basically just said, ‘thank you for the opportunity,’ and then he said, ‘there is a world in which we can make this work.’ And then there was a bunch of phone calls back and forth from Tom Rothman (chairman of Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group), he was really instrumental in the process. It was really interesting for me to have these two studio heads ask, ‘what do you think?’ I’m like, I dunno, I’m an actor.

I think Bob said you cried on the phone. Is that true?
I weeped. No! I did. Yeah. No, I was really emotional because I felt like… it was all coming to an end.

I would like to officially put the MCU on notice: I’m going to whoop me some Marvel @sses when I find out which of you kept my baby out of your dumb Marvel photos! I felt bad for Tom but since I knew how the story turned out, I cackled when I heard that part. But Tom gets the last laugh because Bob Iger called him at a pub to SAVE SPIDER-MAN.

As for the phone call itself, whether Tom actually cried or not is unimportant, because the version I play in my head will have him weeping regardless. And I get that Iger was already in that headspace when he called, but I’ll bet Tom’s liquid emotional state helped. I mean, come on – haven’t we all won back an ex during a 2AM drunk phone call? At least we know Tom didn’t wake up with Morning After regrets. I find it funny that these three – Tom, Iger and Tom Rothman from Sony – are all giving each other credit for this deal. Did they forget they were in Hollywood, Land of Stealing the Credit? I don’t really care who the mastermind was, I am glad it happened though. Tom graciously acknowledged that he thought Spider-Man would have thrived under Sony and he had no issue working for them with the franchise, he just felt at home at Marvel since that was where he started. It was all just, so – sweet. Please, oh please, Universe, let Tom be the real deal. Don’t let him turn out to be a garbage heap like so many others.

Tom was on Kimmel to promote his new animated film, Spies in Disguise, co-starring Will Smith, that comes out Christmas Day. Tom said earlier in the interview that they’d worked for two and a half years on the film ‘together’ but had only just met the day before his Kimmel interview. After that, get comfortable because Tom has a mess of films coming out next year. And, of course, he’ll be back in the Spidey suit in 2021.

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A post shared by Tom Holland (@tomholland2013) on Nov 15, 2019 at 9:30am PST

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