With “The Odyssey” and a brand new “Spider-Man” movie, subsequent summer season appears set to be the summer season of Tom Holland — and the famously boyish and ebullient star can hardly comprise his pleasure.
First up will probably be Christopher Nolan’s epic adaptation of “The Odyssey,” out mid-July. Holland performs Telemachus, the son of the saga’s hero Odysseus and a key character within the Ancient Greek saga.
“The script is the best script I’ve ever read,” Holland, who not too long ago wrapped filming in areas across the Mediterranean, tells AFP.
The film is Nolan’s follow-up to “Oppenheimer,” and once more boasts an A-list forged, together with Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron — and Zendaya, Holland’s fiancee.
“Chris [Nolan] is a real collaborator. He knows what he wants… but it is not an environment where you can’t pitch ideas or build characters in certain ways,” enthuses Holland.
The two Brits haven’t labored collectively earlier than, however have loads in widespread.
Nolan directed the Batman “Dark Knight” trilogy. They stand alongside Holland’s “Spider-Man” films among the many superhero style’s most profitable and beloved films.
Just days earlier than Holland spoke to AFP, pictures circulated of him capturing an motion sequence for “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” in Glasgow, with the Scottish metropolis standing in for New York.
For Holland, donning the Spidey go well with for his seventh general Marvel film, it nonetheless “feels like the first time.”
“Yesterday, I was on top of a tank driving down the high street in Glasgow, in front of thousands of fans, and it was awesome,” he mentioned. “It was so incredible, it was exciting, and exhilarating, and it felt fresh.”
The movie is due out late July, simply two weeks after “The Odyssey.”
Holland’s tackle Peter Parker — aka Spider-Man — has at all times stood out from earlier variations for its particularly playful, youthful vitality.
Those qualities are additionally central to “Never Stop Playing,” a brand new marketing campaign and quick movie fronted by Holland for The LEGO Group, which warns that kids at the moment really feel pressured into rising up too quick.
“With screens and phones and iPads and Instagram and all these sorts of toxic pieces of technology, it was really nice to be a part of something that is a tangible product,” says Holland.
Holland, 29, says his era is fortunate to have grown up on the daybreak of social media, when the know-how was much less pervasive and harmful than it’s now.
“I think that it puts young people under a certain amount of pressure, to maybe not necessarily be themselves, but be versions of themselves that the internet want them to be,” he says. “By the time my peers are having kids, we’ll understand the dangers of social media and kids living in the spotlight.”
Holland’s engagement to “Spider-Man” co-star Zendaya drew world headlines earlier this yr, after she was noticed sporting an enormous, gleaming engagement ring to the Golden Globes.
As for the subject of kids, “I haven’t embarked on that part of my life yet,” Holland says. “But keeping a keen eye on the access young people have on the internet is very important. I’ll definitely be buying them Lego before I’m buying them a phone.”
For now, Holland is happy to maintain imbuing his Spider-Man with that youthful vigor, which “really is just who I am — it’s kind of like a heightened version of myself.”
“It’s very important to never lose that eagerness to play,” he says.
As Holland has grown older and turn into extra well-known, “I’ve become slightly more introverted, and kind of yearn for a bit more of a private life at times,” he displays. “But I think that kid in me will always be there.”
© 2025 AFP