Tom Holland Is King of the Summer Box Office. Now It’s Time for Him to Grow Up.

A new king has ascended the throne in Ithaca—and the summer movie season as well. Tom Holland, who stars in The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day, is having a major moment this summer. The Odyssey is already a critical and commercial smash, raking in more than $650 million globally after just two weekends, and Spider-Man: Brand New Day is set to make a killing when it hits theaters on Friday, July 31. If prognostications are correct, The Odyssey is on track to earn anywhere from $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion at the box office, while Spider-Man: Brand New Day—the long-awaited follow-up to 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, which grossed a massive $1.9 billion—is tracking to make $180 million to $190 million in its opening weekend, which would make it the biggest domestic opening of the year. If everything goes according to plan, Holland could very well be the actor at the center of a $2 billion-plus summer box office haul.

Of course, Holland isn’t the only actor who appears in both of these massive films: His wife, Zendaya, also appears in The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day, sitting at the top of the box office throne with her husband. (Talk about a power couple.) But Zendaya’s roles in The Odyssey, where she has a grand total of about five minutes of screen time, and Spider-Man: Brand New Day, where she plays Peter Parker’s love interest, MJ, are smaller than those of her husband, who plays the titular role in Spider-Man and has one of the meatier major supporting parts in the star-studded Odyssey, portraying Telemachus, the son of Matt Damon’s Odysseus and Anne Hathaway’s Penelope. With Dune: Part Three on the horizon for December, Zendaya is primed to be the undisputed box office champion of 2026. (Fun fact: Benny Safdie, Holland and Zendaya’s Odyssey costar, is currently the highest-grossing film actor of 2026, thanks to that film and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Not bad for the director of The Smashing Machine!)

But make no mistake, as far as male movie stars go, Holland is the king of this summer. It may feel a bit odd that the baby-faced Holland has joined the ranks of major action-movie stars like Tom Cruise, Will Smith, and Chris Pratt. But at 30 years old, Holland is three years older than a 27-year-old Smith was when Independence Day debuted in 1996 and a jaw-dropping seven (seven!) years older than Cruise was when he dominated the box office with Top Gun at 23 years old in 1986. Despite—or, rather, because of—his boyish charm, Holland has reached the peak of male movie stardom. But after Spider-Man: Brand New Day, it’s time, we think, for Holland to hang up the superhero tights and begin the journey to taking on more adult roles.

Taken at face value, this might seem like bad advice. Clearly, Holland’s career is going quite well. What ever happened to “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”? It’s true that Holland has convincingly portrayed the teenage Peter Parker for a decade, having first swung into the role in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War. But thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, his Spider-Man has gotten a lot more mileage than the previous Peter Parkers: Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.

Maguire starred in a trilogy of Spider-Man movies between 2002 and 2007, while Garfield only starred in two Amazing Spider-Man movies from 2012 to 2014. Both Maguire and Garfield joined Spider-Man: No Way Home for a cameo, bringing the number of times they’ve each played Peter Parker to four and three, respectively.

Now take a look at the number of times Holland has played Peter Parker. Going into Brand New Day, Holland had played Peter Parker in six feature films: three stand-alone Spider-Man movies—Homecoming (2017), Far From Home (2019), and 2021’s No Way Home (the kid loves home!)—and three crossover Avengers films, Captain America: Civil War (2016), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), and Avengers: Endgame (2019). Add in this summer’s Brand New Day, and Holland will have starred as Spider-Man in the same number of movies as Maguire and Garfield combined. And a quick scan of Holland’s very long IMDb page will show you that Holland’s Spider-Man web reaches far beyond feature films: He’s played or voiced Peter Parker in a number of shorts and video games, from Fortnite: Chapter 3 (2021) to “Spider-Man: Brand New Day – Super Fan Messi” (2026). That’s a lot of Peter Parker.

As a result, Holland is more defined by Peter Parker than his forebears, which is a double-edged sword. Sure, it’s proof that he can reliably lead a multibillion-dollar tentpole franchise. But he’s also more likely to get pigeonholed and stuck in audiences’ minds as that kid with the Spidey sense. Holland’s non–Peter Parker work has struggled to hit with mainstream audiences.

In 2020, Holland starred in Netflix’s The Devil All the Time—opposite his future Odyssey costar Robert Pattinson—where he played a young man growing up in rural Ohio following World War II; the film received mixed reviews. In 2021 he led the film Chaos Walking opposite Daisy Ridley, about a man who lives in a dystopian society without women, and also fronted Cherry, where he portrayed a college dropout turned Iraq war veteran who robs banks to fund his and his wife’s drug addiction. While he received some positive notices for the decidedly grown-up Cherry, both projects failed to make a dent in the larger entertainment landscape. And Holland is aware of this. He recently told the podcast Dish that it was difficult doing press for some of his past movies that he considered “shit” and thought people “shouldn’t” watch. He didn’t name names, but it wouldn’t be surprising if he were referring to Chaos Walking, which holds a 21% on Rotten Tomatoes.

But thankfully, then came The Odyssey. Given the perpetual boyhood Holland has found himself in as a result of his decade as Spider-Man, he was a natural choice to play Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, who is transitioning from boyhood to adulthood and isn’t quite yet ready to rule Ithaca. But even with Holland’s role seeming tailor-made to his strengths, many have felt that Holland wasn’t able to hold his own against his more seasoned costars, like Hathaway. Variety, somewhat rudely, put him dead last in its ranking of Odyssey performances, writing that “nearly every line delivery lacks conviction.” Ouch.

Holland should be commended for leaving the safety and comfort of a Marvel lot and giving it his best try in a Christopher Nolan film. (Leading up to The Odyssey’s release, Holland went viral for his amazement at Nolan’s level of preparation and how he ran the movie’s set. One also assumes the practical effects on set made it a far cry from his days in front of a Marvel green screen.) But until he untangles himself from Spider-Man’s web once and for all, it’s going to be hard to believe Holland in roles that are fit for his still-developing but legitimate acting chops.

For what it’s worth, Holland has suggested that he might be ready to see what else is out there. In 2021 he told GQ, “If I’m playing Spider-Man after I’m 30, I’ve done something wrong.” Well, that moment has come. But in a 2026 GQ cover story, Holland changed his tune. “I think the truth is that playing Spider-Man has been the joy of my life,” he said. “I now kind of stand on the plinth of like, I’ll do it for as long as they’ll have me.”

No, Tom. You were right in 2021. You’ve had a good run, but it’s time to move on. Other actors have made the journey from boyhood to adulthood before—Leonardo DiCaprio, Timothée Chalamet—and it might behoove Holland to take a page out of their book as he reaches that point in his own career. It seems he might already be taking tips from Chalamet, who cemented his status as a real adult actor with an Oscar nomination for starring as Bob Dylan in the musical biopic A Complete Unknown. Holland’s long-gestating Fred Astaire biopic is reportedly finally in rehearsal and could be just the ticket for transitioning the actor into full-fledged leading man territory. (He’s got the moves: He played Billy Elliot on the West End as a kid!)

So here’s hoping that after Brand New Day makes a billion dollars, Holland is able to resist Spider-Man’s siren song. If not, it’s okay. His wife has figured out the whole “transition from child star to A-list actor” thing. He can always take pointers from her.