Swing Shift

Webhead Broadens His Horizons in Spider-man: Far From Home – and So Does the MCU. Total Film Heads on Set to Discover New Friends, New Foes and Spidey’s New Place in a Post-snap World. Warning: Major Spoilers for Avengers: Endgame Ahead…

- Matthew LeyLand

Spider-Man’s world is out of whack. “It’s funny,” smiles Tom Holland. “The first film was called Spider-Man: Homecoming, and I shot it, like, 9,000 miles away from home. And this one’s called Spider-Man: Far From Home, and I live just outside the M25. So it’s a bit of a weird one…” It gets weirder. The setting may be Hertfordshire’s Leavesden Studios, but the sets span the globe: there’s a New York restaurant (chandeliers, cute lampshades, looks cosy), a Prague bar (peeling paint, ripped drapes, looks haunted) and today’s key location, a Venice canal. Gondola: check. Crystal-blue water: check. Fake baby in buggy staring at TF: brrr.

It’s early August, 2018; several months after the release of Avengers: Infinity War, but several more before the release – and even the title reveal – of Avengers: Endgame. Hence a certain caginess on set about when Far From Home takes place.

For now, the focus is on the where. “A lot of the action in Homecoming was kind of private, more contained,” says Holland (Exhibit A: Spidey stuck all night in a sealed warehouse). “This one is much more global. We’ve got a lot of screaming extras!”