Tom Holland, the young actor who will be our next Spider Man, has now joined Lost City of Z, the hugely anticipated new film by James Gray, arguably one of the best of the modern American directors alongside David Fincher, Wes Anderson, P.T. Anderson, and Martin Scorsese. Holland's role has not been disclosed, but he's joining some exciting company with Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, and Sienna Miller. These are all new actors for Gray, who has been working rather steadily with Joaquin Phoenix since The Yards, his magnificent second feature following his bracing, stylish debut, Little Odessa; his last film, The Immigrant, was one of the best films of 2014. Lost City of Z just recently started production in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and will next shoot for several weeks in Colombia.

tom-holland-wolf-hall
Image via PBS

As for Holland, it would seem that his ambition, not unlike co-star Pattinson, is to work with major, important directors as often as he appears in financially lucrative franchises such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Pattinson did quite well for himself by starring in the largely excruciating Twilight films, and has since partnered with the master, David Cronenberg, on two separate occasions (Cosmopolis, Maps to the Stars), David Michôd on The Rover, and Werner Herzog on the upcoming Queen of the Desert, as well as lining up projects with Anton Corbijn, Harmony Korine, and the Safdie Brothers. Holland's chops are not in dispute, as anyone who saw Wolf Hall will attest, and there's been some exciting talk about him in In the Heart of the Sea, so there's little reason to think his upcoming roles in Captain America: Civil War or the Spider-Man reboot will limit him from more daring projects with true visionaries.


Here's the official synopsis for Lost City of Z:

LOST CITY OF Z follows Percy Fawcett, a conscripted soldier and born explorer who disappeared in the 1920s while searching for a mythical city in the Amazon jungles of Brazil that he believed he discovered on a prior expedition.

spider-man-tom-holland
Image via XYZ Films