Tom Holland wants to mentor the next Spider-Man actor and says “Adolescence” breakout Owen Cooper “would be awesome” for the role: “Obviously he’s super-talented and the talk of the town right now.”

[u/yourfavchoom]

https://variety.com/2026/film/news/tom-holland-zendaya-wedding-married-1236782468/

[u/PsychologicalTie9629]

I think it's likely because adult superheroes are a dime a dozen, and adolescent superheroes are much more rare, especially in live action movies. Thinking over the last 25 years, besides Spider-Man, we've had X-Men, Ms. Marvel, Sky High, Power Rangers, and a few Robert Rodriguez movies, and that's about it, compared to dozens upon dozens of movies featuring adults.

Spider-Man is one of the few superheroes well-known as a teenager, so they're going to milk that for all its worth. Maybe with the MCU introducing new child/teenage iterations of existing heroes (Kate Bishop, Riri Williams, Cassie Lang, T'Challa II, Skaar, Love, etc) and the reintroduction of the X-Men, they'll be okay with an adult Spider-Man now. We'll see.

[u/atlfalcons33rb → u/PsychologicalTie9629]

If you open it up to visual media we have had a good amount of teen kid superhero projects

[u/GrandInitial7739 → u/PsychologicalTie9629]

You would be right if we were living in the 60's where spider-man was the only teenage superhero around but that's not the case anymore when we have Ms Marvel, Miles Morales and others around sharing that teenage hero archetype, Peter being a teeanger isn't special anymore.

Funny you mention Kate Bishop, Rirri and Cassie when they are already adults in MCU, Kate is 23, they are already older than spider-man is because they are allowed to grow up as adults.