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Tom Holland said in an interview with Quotable on the “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” press tour that one of the worst cuts he saw of the movie was shaped by test screenings.
“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 [at test screenings] who saw the film,” Holland said. “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.”
Test screenings have become a routine step in the studio moviemaking process. “Star Wars” creator George Lucas recently made headlines for speaking out against them. He told A Rabbit’s Foot (via IGN) that Hollywood’s over-reliance on focus groups has created studio movies dictated entirely by fans over filmmakers.
“I don’t like focus groups,” Lucas told the publication. “The audience doesn’t know what they want to see. If they don’t like a character, that’s interesting, and as a filmmaker I want to find out why. But when the studios hear that, they take the wrong message. They let the audience actually make the movie. Of course, now they go crazy with that. Now, it’s all about what the fans think. That isn’t how you make the movie. You make a movie by finding someone that knows how to make movies, that has a story to tell and is passionate about it.”
Maggie Gyllenhaal notably revealed earlier this year that test screenings for “The Bride!” took her to task over the movie’s depiction of violence and sexual violence. James Gunn test screened “Superman” and discovered that audiences opposed the moment when David Corenswet’s Man of Steel decides to save a squirrel as Metropolis is being attacked by a rampaging Kaiju monster. Gunn refused to listen.
“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” opens in theaters July 31. Watch Holland and his co-stars’ full interview with Quotable in the video below.
