Indian Twitter threatens to ‘boycott Spider-Man’ after identity mix-up with author Tom Holland

India has increasingly become an important market for Marvel Studios in recent years, but could do nothing about this week’s bizarre social media storm, as Mayank Aggarwal reports

The new Spider-Man movie – starring the actor Tom Holland, not the historian – is scheduled to hit theatres in December 2021 (AP)

Thousands of Indian Twitter users threatened to boycott Spider-Man late on Thursday in the sort of social media storm that typically leaves corporate public relations officers scrambling to make amends – except this time, Marvel Studios had done nothing wrong.

The outpouring of anger was triggered after a sarcastic tweet from Tom Holland about India’s brand new cricket stadium, the largest in the world, being named after its sitting prime minister Narendra Modi.

The only problem was that the Tom Holland in question was the cricket fan, historian and Dominion author – not the young British actor who plays the web-slinging superhero.