The New Spider-Man: Sony and Marvel Bet Big on Tom Holland
After much speculation and debate, Marvel has finally revealed who will play Peter Parker in its next Spider-Man reboot — and it’s not a name you’ll be likely to recognize: 19-year-old Tom Holland.
Who? Exactly.
Significantly more cherubic than the last two stars cast in the role — Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield — Holland appeared in the 2012 movie The Impossible and had a stint in the title role of the London production of Billy Elliott. Now he’ll be the web-slinging superhero, starting with a relatively small role in next year’s Captain America: Civil War and then in an as-yet-unnamed Spider-Man movie.
Marvel had said they would be casting someone more in line with Spidey’s actual age. In the comics and films, Parker is ostensibly an 18-year-old high school senior, but Maguire was 27 when he first donned the mask, while Garfield was 28.
Related: Sony Spins a New Spider-Man Strategy with Disney
The very fact that Marvel was able to cast anyone in the role at all was thanks to a protracted negotiations with Spider-Man’s cinematic rights-holder, Sony. Finally clinching this deal allows Marvel to bring have Spider-Man play his pivotal and necessary role in Civil War, a comic-book story arc adored by critics and fans alike.
But as much as fans might have riding on Holland’s Spider-Man, Marvel and Sony are counting on him even more: They’re effectively betting hundreds of millions of dollars on the little-known actor, and hoping he can breathe new life into a franchise that, while is generated $1.5 billion in U.S. box office sales and about $4 billion worldwide, has seen dwindling returns over time.
The first Spider-Man movie starring Holland is slated to be released on July 28, 2017.
Spider-Man (2002): $403,706,375
Spider-Man 2 (2004): $373,585,825
Spider-Man 3 (2007): $336,530,303
The Amazing Spider-Man (2012): $262,030,663
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014): $202,853,933
Chart of the Day: Boosting Corporate Tax Revenues
The leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have all proposed increasing taxes on corporations, including raising income tax rates to levels ranging from 25% to 35%, up from the current 21% imposed by the Republican tax cuts in 2017. With Bernie Sanders leading the way at $3.9 trillion, here’s how much revenue the higher proposed corporate taxes, along with additional proposed surtaxes and reduced tax breaks, would generate over a decade, according to calculations by the right-leaning Tax Foundation, highlighted Wednesday by Bloomberg News.
Chart of the Day: Discretionary Spending Droops
The federal government’s total non-defense discretionary spending – which covers everything from education and national parks to veterans’ medical care and low-income housing assistance – equals 3.2% of GDP in 2020, near historic lows going back to 1962, according to an analysis this week from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Chart of the Week: Trump Adds $4.7 Trillion in Debt
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated this week that President Trump has now signed legislation that will add a total of $4.7 trillion to the national debt between 2017 and 2029. Tax cuts and spending increases account for similar portions of the projected increase, though if the individual tax cuts in the 2017 Republican overhaul are extended beyond their current expiration date at the end of 2025, they would add another $1 trillion in debt through 2029.
Chart of the Day: The Long Decline in Interest Rates
Are interest rates destined to move higher, increasing the cost of private and public debt? While many experts believe that higher rates are all but inevitable, historian Paul Schmelzing argues that today’s low-interest environment is consistent with a long-term trend stretching back 600 years.
The chart “shows a clear historical downtrend, with rates falling about 1% every 60 years to near zero today,” says Bloomberg’s Aaron Brown. “Rates do tend to revert to a mean, but that mean seems to be declining.”
Chart of the Day: Drug Price Plans Compared
Lawmakers are considering three separate bills that are intended to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. Here’s an overview of the proposals, from a series of charts produced by the Kaiser Family Foundation this week. An interesting detail highlighted in another chart: 88% of voters – including 92% of Democrats and 85% of Republicans – want to give the government the power to negotiate prices with drug companies.
