Joe Russo calls Tom Holland the last great movie star — his Avengers films killed the rest

Joe Russo has crowned Tom Holland "the last great movie star". In an interview with CBR published at the weekend, the Avengers: Endgame co-director said Holland connects with audiences in a way "very few actors in history" have, compared his old-Hollywood energy to Gene Kelly's, and described something vintage in him, from an era that no longer exists. His main exhibit: Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which Russo held up as proof of Holland's star power.

It is quite the exhibit. Brand New Day opened at the end of July with $360 million in North America, beating the $357 million record Endgame set in 2019. It has since taken about $2.51 billion worldwide, which makes it the biggest film of 2026 so far, more than $700 million clear of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Holland is in that one too, as Telemachus, the son of Matt Damon's Odysseus.

The era the Russos built

The Hollywood Russo is nostalgic for, where people bought a ticket for a face, did not die of natural causes. Anthony and Joe Russo directed four Marvel films, and each one sold the brand first and the actor second. Holland got his Spider-Man job in one of them, after the brothers fought Sony to cast a teenager.

• 2016: Captain America: Civil War introduces Holland's Peter Parker as a supporting player in someone else's film.
• 2018: Avengers: Infinity War takes $2.05 billion with dozens of heroes sharing the screen.
• 2019: Endgame takes $2.8 billion and the domestic opening record, which then holds for seven years.
• August 2026: Brand New Day breaks that record. The Russos congratulate the team on Instagram with artwork of Spider-Man wearing the Infinity Stones as rings.

Seven years is a long time to hold a box office record, and the brothers lost theirs with good grace.

The caption was short, and to be fair, it was the right call:

"The gauntlet has been passed."

— Anthony and Joe Russo on Instagram, after Brand New Day broke Endgame's opening record

Note who passed what to whom. A record set by one superhero team-up went to another superhero film, and the man who set it now calls the result proof that a star still exists.

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That is not a movie star beating a franchise. That is a franchise beating a franchise.

Holland without the suit

The old test of a movie star is simple: does the audience come when there is no franchise attached? Holland's answers so far are mixed at best.

Cherry, the 2021 crime drama the Russos directed themselves, gave him his most serious lead role. It got a limited cinema run in February 2021, went to Apple TV+ two weeks later and sits at 37% on Rotten Tomatoes. Chaos Walking, released the same year, made around $27 million worldwide on a reported $100 million budget. Uncharted did pass $400 million in 2022, but that is a PlayStation franchise with a treasure map on the box.

None of this makes Holland a bad actor or an unpopular one. He is likeable, hard-working and on the two biggest films of the year. But one of them is Spider-Man and the other is Nolan doing Homer, and neither is a fair test of whether a face alone fills a cinema.

The directors who made the costume bigger than the actor are now mourning the actor.

Next up is the Russos' own Avengers: Doomsday, out on 18 December 2026.

Holland isn't currently slated to appear, although rumours of a cameo reportedly persist. If he does turn up, it will be in the suit. By Russo's own logic, that is where the last great movie star does his best work.

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