Tom Holland has revealed that one of the worst cuts of Spider-Man: Brand New Day came directly from listening to test-screening audiences — and the creative team wanted no part of it.

Speaking in a Quotable interview published on Instagram on 29 July, Holland said the filmmakers assembled a version of the film that incorporated every note from test-screening feedback cards. The result, according to the star, was a cut they "hated" because "it totally didn't work" (Variety).

Test screenings are an industry standard: studios invite a sample audience, usually unaffiliated with the production, to watch an unfinished cut and fill out cards rating the film and flagging what confused them, moved them, or fell flat. Studios use the feedback to guide editing changes before the final release. In this case, the feedback was followed a little too faithfully.

Holland, who conducted the interview alongside two other people (Yahoo Entertainment), said the test-screening-driven cut "was what the people were asking for, but it wasn't quite what we wanted as the creatives" (Variety). He added that the team "learned lessons from that experience" and that "a movie can change in a thousand different ways in the edit room."

The interview was conducted as part of the Brand New Day press tour, ahead of the film's theatrical opening on 31 July.

Holland's comments add a chapter to a long-running tension in the film business between creative vision and audience data. Variety noted that George Lucas has criticised focus groups in the past, that Maggie Gyllenhaal navigated test-screening feedback on The Bride!, and that James Gunn refused to cut a scene involving a squirrel from his Superman despite negative test-screening reactions — all cases where filmmakers pushed back against audience-driven suggestions (Variety).

For audiences, Holland's account is a peek behind the curtain at how a blockbuster finds its final shape. The edit room is where a film is actually assembled from hundreds of hours of footage, and the decisions made there — which scenes stay, which are trimmed, which are cut entirely — can change the tone and pacing of a film entirely. Test screenings are one input into that process, but as Holland makes clear, they are not the only one, and a film built solely around audience notes can lose the thing its filmmakers were chasing in the first place.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens in theatres on 31 July.