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Imagine Spider-Man with an R rating. Short, sharp, and suddenly darker than anything we've seen from the web-slinger on screen. Tom Holland dropped a hint that the character's future could tilt toward a grittier corner of the Marvel tapestry.
Jon Bernthal, fresh from returning to the MCU timeline in The Punisher: One Last Kill, opened up about his long friendship with Holland in an interview with Empire. He admitted he wasn't a hardcore comics fan at first, and that it was Holland who pushed him toward the character — explaining why the Punisher mattered and why the role felt magnetic. They've stayed close ever since. Bernthal called it a rare gift to make two films back-to-back with Holland, naming projects like The Odyssey and Spider-Man as part of that unexpected run.
That shift — from small-screen edginess to theatrical muscle — matters. The Punisher has mostly been a TV figure inside Marvel's orbit, but now Bernthal's Frank Castle is stepping into the cinema side of things. It's a move fans remember from Charlie Cox's leap into Spider-Man: No Way Home, which blurred the old boundaries between Netflix and big-screen Marvel in recent years.
There is, however, a messy legal wrinkle. Sony and Marvel collaborate on Spider-Man for theaters, but their deal doesn't automatically extend to television. That explains why Daredevil: Born Again could only hint at Spider-Man without ever naming him outright — TV rights for the wall-crawler live elsewhere unless Sony signs off.
Rights, not creative will, may decide where Tom Holland's Spider-Man appears next.
So what does that mean for Brand New Day, the next Holland-led Spider-Man film? If the upcoming trailer leans into Peter Parker and Frank Castle's dynamic and audiences respond, studios will notice. A positive reception could nudge Sony and Marvel back to the bargaining table, perhaps allowing Holland to cross over into Disney+ territory. More likely, though, any live-action TV meeting might be arranged as a one-off special or event — easier legally than committing Peter to a serialized Disney+ run.
The larger MCU roadmap also factors into the calculus. After Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Marvel's cameras turn toward the massive Avengers chapters — Doomsday and Secret Wars — and it's still unclear whether Holland will feature in those ensembles. Studios often weigh box-office momentum and story necessity before signing actors to multiverse-spanning commitments.
If Brand New Day lands big at the box office, expect talk of a fifth Spider-Man film to ramp up quickly. If it leans darker and audiences embrace that tone, Holland's iteration of Peter Parker could take on a very different life in Marvel's cinematic future.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings into theaters on July 31. Are you ready to see a tougher, grimmer Peter Parker take the stage?
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