Andrew Garfield is back on top. But it wasn’t easy.

After making two “Spider Man” Movies he managed to get himself fired from a third one. I wrote the below column on May 1, 2015.

Now–as you might know–he’s back in the “Spider Man” fold. He’s also looking at an Oscar nomination for “tick tick Boom.” In fact, I think he could win Best Actor.

In between, Garfield won a Tony Award for “Angels in America” on Broadway. And he still has that full head of hair!

Here’s my column from May 1, 2015:

Thanks to the Sony hacks, via Wikileaks, we now know why Andrew Garfield won’t be making any more “Spider Man” movies– or maybe any Sony films for the foreseeable future.

It turns that Garfield insulted Sony chief Kaz Hirai by snubbing him last summer in Rio de Janeiro at a big Sony gala celebrating the end of the World Cup. Kaz had planned to introduce Garfield as the star of “Spider Man 3” set for 2016 in a speech before 750 guests. But Garfield, having just arrived in Rio, made a huge mistake. He snubbed Kaz and never came down for dinner. Yikes. In Rio this didn’t go well, and the bad feeling reverberated. An email alerting everyone read: “Here we are about one hour away from our Gala event and Andrew decides he doesn’t want to attend.  He has a rather scruffy beard and he just wants to be left alone.”

Kaz Hirai had planned on making this speech:

Andrew is an actor who has graced the screen in roles in several important Sony Pictures Entertainment films, including The Social Network, in which he played Mark Zuckerberg’s onetime friend and co-founder of Facebook, Eduardo Saverin.  The Social Network, to my mind, is the Citizen Kane of the 21st Century, a film that social historians hundreds of years from now will point to as one of the most emblematic of our era.

[slide showing poster of The Social Network and The Amazing Spider-Man 2] Another historic movie starring Andrew is The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which continues to weave movie magic in hearts and minds around the world.  Together those two films have taken in more than $XXX million at the global box office.

I’m proud to say that Andrew will be returning as Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man 3, which will be released in May, 2016.

Needless to say, when Garfield didn’t come down for dinner, the speech was changed. Garfield next stars in “99 Homes” this September, and Martin Scorsese’s “Silence” with Adam Driver.

Here is a series of emails explaining all this:

“Spider Man: No Way Home” set a record with the 3rd highest ever Thursday previews at the box office. Total was $50 million.

AMC Theater stock is up 14% on the news. “Spider Man” is on its way to a $150 million weekend, maybe more.

This is despite the pandemic and theater going at a low in recent months. But the audience is piling in to see all the characters from 20 years of these movies return for one big rodeo. Amazing. And the movie is good!