Sony's producer pulled each new Spider-Man aside before filming and lectured them not to date their co-star. All three ignored her. Amy Pascal ran the warning like a ritual. She sat down Tobey and Kirsten. Then Andrew and Emma. Then Tom and Zendaya, separately, right after casting them in 2016. Her exact words were "Don't go there. Just don't. Try not to." Her record now stands at 0 for 3. And each pair went further than the last. Tobey and Kirsten lasted about a year. Andrew and Emma made it four. Tom and Zendaya blew past engaged entirely. Tom confirmed this summer that they're already married, after AI-generated wedding photos went viral and his grandmother panicked that she hadn't been invited. He told her she had nothing to worry about, since the family was all there. The pattern was never a coincidence. A chemistry read is the final step of casting a romantic lead. Sony auditions hundreds of actors, then tests the finalists in pairs to find the two people whose attraction looks most real on camera. The winners get paid to gaze at each other for three movies across six years. The studio built a machine that selects for chemistry, then asked it to stop producing chemistry. Pascal has made peace with it. Her current position is that MJ and Peter just always fall in love, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.