Summary
- Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man trilogy on Netflix has accumulated a massive 59.5 million hours of viewership, making it the most popular among all three actors’ iterations of the superhero.
- When looking at the viewership of just the first two movies of each actor’s tenure, Tobey Maguire’s films achieved 26.4 million, while Tom Holland’s Homecoming and Far From Home garnered the highest volume at 29.5 million.
- While it’s difficult to determine a definitive winner, the popularity of each Spider-Man actor may be influenced by factors such as being part of the MCU and the recent surge in interest sparked by No Way Home, which featured multiple versions of Spider-Man.
The debate over which big screen version of Spider-Man is the most popular has been going on for years, and now Netflix has stepped into the fray with some new data that could possibly settle the argument.
In 2021, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man came face to face with his previous iterations, played by Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. While both actors have been popular in their own right, when all three came together the result was to reignite the debate over which star plays the most popular version of Marvel’s webbed wonder.
Thanks to its deal with Sony Pictures, Netflix is currently streaming Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man trilogy, Andrew Garfield’s The Amazing Spider-Man movies, Tom Holland’s MCU solo trilogy (including the extended version of Spider-Man: No Way Home), and the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse all in the same place. This means that the streamer has been able to provide an insight into exactly which of Peter Parker’s iterations is most popular among viewers.
According to the data, subscribers watched over 100 million hours across all of the Spider-Man movies available on the platform over a six-month period. When adding up the data for the movies each Spider-Man actor has appeared in, Maguire came out on top with a massive 59.5 million hours, pushing Tom Holland into second place with 48.9 million, and Andrew Garfield into third with 36.2 million. Naturally, this includes the hours watched for both iterations of No Way Home, which does make it a little trickier to work out a true winner.
Related: Tobey Maguire’s Best Moments as Spider-Man, Ranked
Is Tobey Maguire Actually the Most Popular Spider-Man?
Sony Pictures
Although this breakdown of Netflix’s data seems to suggest that, as many would attest, Maguire is the most popular actor to have played Spider-Man, there are many ways to interpret the data.
If broken down to just include the viewership of the first two movies of all three actor’s tenures, levelling the playing field in terms of the volume of movies, then the picture is a little different. Maguire’s Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 pulled in a combined viewership of 26.4 million, while Garfield’s movies achieved 19 million. However, Holland’s Homecoming and Far From Home delivered the highest volume of 29.5 million.
So perhaps the search to name the most popular Spider-Man is almost as tricky to pin down as the Marvel hero himself. Of course, Holland had the advantage of having his movies featuring as part of the MCU, and being seen as more current and recent than Maguire’s original movies. However, No Way Home certainly instigated a huge wave of interest in both Maguire and Garfield’s iterations of the character, including new calls for both stars to get new solo outings themselves.
While there may be no way to definitively decide who is the supreme Spider-Man, fans are hoping that No Way Home was not the last time we see all three Spider-Men on screen together. With rumors that Avengers: Secret Wars could bring back Maguire, Garfield and Holland, as well as a possible live-action debut for some of the characters featured in the Spider-Verse movies, we may just have to accept that everyone has their favorite friendly neighborhood Spider-Man…and no amount of data will change that.
Release Date May 1, 2002
Rating PG-13
Runtime 121
You can view the original article HERE.
