After seeing more than 1,500 actors, Marvel and Sony, using lead casting director Sarah Finn (who has worked on several Marvel movies) narrowed the list to six for a fateful screen test on May 30 in Atlanta, where Civil War is currently shooting. Those actors — Holland, Asa Butterfield, Judah Lewis, Matthew Lintz, Charlie Plummer and Charlie Rowe — are all between the ages of 14 and 19, in keeping with producers' goal of casting a Peter Parker who actually looks like he is in high school. (Previous Spider-Men Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, were both in their mid-to-late 20s when they landed the role.)
Robert Downey Jr., whose Iron Man character appears in Civil War and is said to share scenes with Peter Parker/Spider-Man, participated with the actors in the tests, which included former-Sony-chief-turned-producer Amy Pascal and Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige. They were looking for chemistry between the boy and the elder Avenger.
After the initial round of tests, producers narrowed the contenders to just two, Holland and Rowe, though Holland was the frontrunner. Unable to decide between them, they asked for a second screen test that occurred the week of June 8. Sources say that Holland was the only actor who tested separately with Downey and Chris Evans, who portrays Captain America.