Benedict Cumberbatch Didn't Think Spider-Man: No Way Home…

Spider-Man: No Way Home star Benedict Cumberbatch has never really had any doubt that the movie was going to be a hit. When he was confronted with rumors that he was initially nervous about the Spider-Man 3's success, he cleared things up and explained how that particular talk got started

Spider-Man: No Way Home was released in December of 2021 and while there were some who wondered if it might do big numbers because it was in the middle of a resurgent COVID pandemic, it turns out those worries were unfounded. The Tom Holland and Cumberbatch-starring movie turned out to be a massive box office and critical success.

While appearing on the red carpet for the Screen Actor's Guild awards two weeks ago, Cumberbatch was cornered by an interviewer with Entertainment Tonight about the rumor that he was worried about Spider-Man: No Way Home when he first got into it. When he was first asked whether he thought Spider-Man: No Way Home might struggle, he appeared to be genuinely taken aback answering no very quickly. After a beat, the actor appeared to have realized where that talk came from, explaining that it was born out of a conversation with Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige. Cumberbatch said that Feige told him that No Way Home was "the future of cinema in this period."

Cumberbatch went on to explain that at first he thought that Feige was being a bit extreme until it was explained to him that Spider-Man: No Way Hom e would have to succeed only based on box office results because it couldn't lean on a streaming service, since Sony didn't have a dedicated platform to put the movie on. It was then that it dawned on the actor that this was indeed a bit of a test balloon to see if movies that were being screened in theaters could really have the kind of success they had in the past. It was a test to see if audiences were ready to go back in large numbers.

Of course, it's well known now that Spider-Man: No Way Home was indeed a massive success despite not having the kind of parachute that movies like Mortal Kombat or Wonder Woman 1984 had with HBO Max. But Cumberbatch wants everyone to understand that while there might have been some trepidation about whether people would be coming to the theater in the way they had in years past, he always knew that the cast and the script were more than good enough to make a very successful movie.

Spider-Man: No Way Home is currently in theaters.