Tom Holland has revealed that he, Zendaya, and Jacob Batalon “hated” an early cut of Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
When speaking with Quotable, Tom Holland was asked about what it feels like to finish such a massive film. He noted that he doesn’t feel complete until the film has been out for a while and audiences have had a chance to respond to it, partially because a movie changes a lot from script to production to post-production. He went on to speak about how they watched a bunch of different cuts of the Brand New Day as part of this process, and the starring trio outright hated one of them.
“We’ve seen loads of different cuts of this movie, and one of the cuts, they took all of the notes from all of the random people who saw the film,” said Holland. “And then they changed the movie, and we watched it, and we hated it. It totally didn’t work. It was what the people were asking for, but it wasn’t quite what we wanted as the creatives. But they learned lessons from that experience, so a movie can change in a thousand different ways in the edit room.”
What Holland is seemingly speaking about is feedback from test screenings. Films will often show rough cuts to random audiences to gain feedback, but this has its pros and cons. One random audience can’t always accurately predict how everyone will feel. Sometimes movies have been unintentionally butchered by test audiences who didn’t understand it. It’s up to the creative team to more or less decipher the underlying feedback that can actually help strengthen the project, as opposed to just taking it all at face value.
Luckily, it sounds as though the Spider-Man team was able to sift through the noise and make something that aligned with their vision while taking advantage of feedback. Spider-Man: Brand New Day currently boasts a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is tracking to have the biggest opening weekend of 2026. We gave the movie a 7/10, noting that it covers familiar ground for Spidey, but still managed to be an enjoyable adventure.
Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN’s news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.
