Tom Holland is having the kind of summer most actors only dream about. He may also be his own toughest competition at the box office.
Holland stars in The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s epic that has sat atop the domestic box office since it opened July 17. On Friday, he returns as Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which is tracking to be one of the biggest openings in history, and to bump The Odyssey from the No. 1 spot. His wife and frequent co-star, Zendaya, appears in both films, too.
Brand New Day, the fourth solo Spider-Man movie starring Holland, has watched its projections climb for weeks. Early projections put the opening around $180 million; more recent forecasts range from about $212 million to $250 million, with some trackers going higher.
There is one obstacle, and it belongs to Holland’s other film. The Odyssey claimed the country’s IMAX screens for a three-week run, so Brand New Day opens without IMAX and will lean on other premium large-format screens instead. One Tom Holland blockbuster, in other words, is boxing the other out of the most lucrative theaters.
The collision almost didn’t happen. When Nolan offered Holland the role of Telemachus, Odysseus’s son, both movies were set to begin filming the same day. Holland said he called Sony Pictures chief Tom Rothman for what he described to GQ as a “very uncomfortable conversation,” asking that the Spider-Man shoot be pushed so he could make Nolan’s film first.
He had encouragement at home. Holland told People that Zendaya, whom he has since married, gave him a playful ultimatum: “I’ll leave you if you don’t do The Odyssey.” Nolan, nearby during the interview, replied, “Well, thank you to her.”
Sony agreed to move Brand New Day, a delay Holland later credited with improving the film, since the extra time let the production hire Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton and develop the script. “The Odyssey almost saved Spider-Man because we wouldn’t have had Destin,” Holland said.
The result is a first. According to the <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/tom-holland-zendaya-blockbuster-honeymoon-1236653698/” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>Hollywood Reporter, Holland and Zendaya are the first married couple to headline two major summer releases weeks apart. Zendaya plays the goddess Athena in The Odyssey and MJ in Brand New Day.
Whether Spider-Man dethrones The Odyssey should be clear by Sunday. Either way, Holland wins.
