Tom Holland is reportedly in talks to star in Christopher Nolan’s next top secret movie, but will have to juggle the role with his concurrent filming schedule for Spider-Man 4.
News broke on Oct. 21 that Nolan had tapped Holland to appear in the film, joining the already announced castmate and lead actor Matt Damon. We don’t yet know the title of the Nolan film — his first since the Oscar-winning blockbuster Oppenheimer — but sources claim the movie will not be set in the present day.
Whether that means it will take place in the past à la Dunkirk, or the future like Interstellar (if I understood that movie correctly) remains to be seen, but we do know the project will be written and directed by Nolan, and distributed by Universal Pictures.
The untitled movie also has a release date slated for July 17, 2026, so it will be some time before we see Holland in something other than that iconic web-slinging suit. On that front, it has been reported that Holland’s role in the Nolan movie will have to be managed alongside his obvious place in Spider-Man 4, the follow-up to the multiverse-crossing Spider-Man: No Way Home.
He’s the title character after all, so he can’t exactly call in sick and go to another gig, even if that gig is with one of Hollywood’s buzziest directors. The Hollywood Reporter also notes that in addition to the Spider-Man installment, the Nolan project might also be impacted by the filming scheduled for Avengers: Doomsday, the Robert Downey Jr.-starring vehicle which Holland will also likely appear in.
Those claims of both the official filming schedule for Spider-Man 4 and Holland’s role in Doomsday have not yet been officially confirmed, but they outline a pretty busy year for the actor if they do turn out to be true.
While managing a Marvel actor’s filming schedule might be the curse of directors like Martin Scorcese or Francis Ford Coppola — both of whom have denounced superhero movies — Nolan seems a little more sympathetic to the genre, not least because he helmed the Dark Knight franchise.
Just this year, the Inception director praised superhero movies for keeping cinemas afloat during the pandemic, going as far as “thank[ing] God for Marvel” movies. Meanwhile, Holland himself seems content continuing his Spider-Man streak, even with a role in a Nolan movie lined up.
“I’ll always want to do Spider-Man films,” Holland said in an interview earlier this year. “I owe my life and career to Spider-Man, so the simple answer is yes, I’ll always want to do more.” Both the Nolan project and Spider-Man 4 will arrive after a brief movie hiatus for Holland, who hasn’t appeared on the big screen since the 2022 action film Uncharted.
In other Spider-Man 4 news, Holland revealed earlier this month that while the scripts for the inevitable blockbuster aren’t finished, the early drafts “really lit a fire in me” when he read them with girlfriend and co-star Zendaya.
“[We] read it together and we at times were bouncing around the living room, like this is a real movie worthy of fans’ respect.” Let’s see how it all pans out, but if anyone can juggle two blockbuster filming schedules, it’s the guy with spider-like reflexes and the Peter tingle.