Jon Watts cut his teeth on indie movies like Clown and Cop Car, but his big break came when Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures tapped him to helm 2017's Spider-Man: Homecoming.
He'd later return for Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) and Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), with the latter presenting more than its fair share of challenges thanks to the pandemic. Still, the threequel was a massive hit and Watts was announced as the director of The Fantastic Four, only to walk away from the project months later.
Now, the untitled Spider-Man 4 - which is expected to be released between Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars - finds itself without a director because Watts will not return to helm the wall-crawler's next adventure.
Talking to The Hollywood Reporter, the filmmaker broke his silence on moving on from the MCU by admitting he's all too aware that following Spider-Man: No Way Home will be near impossible.
"That was such a specific moment in time, and the reaction to that movie was just so unbelievable," he says, explaining he came to the realisation that, "It’s never going to be like this, ever again."
After working on Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, Watts has focused on Wolfs, a new action-comedy starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt as two rival fixers forced to work together.
"Sometimes you do an action movie, and all the fun action stuff is given to the second-unit director," he says. "On the Marvel movies, you split up the work because there’s so much to be done. Rarely do you get the Christopher Nolan opportunity to do all of it. On this one, I was like, 'I want to shoot every single shot.'"
While it's easy to read between the lines here to see that Watts is enjoying his freedom outside the confines of the MCU, it seems his reason for not directing Spider-Man 4 or The Fantastic Four: First Steps is because, when all is said and done, these aren't his characters.
"I was just getting started and Marvel came along - and I take full creative ownership over all those films - but Spider-Man is always going to be Stan Lee and Steve Ditko‘s creation," he says. "This was the chance for me to go back to my voice and my vision and my style. Wolfs is mine, and that’s a really good feeling."
It doesn't seem there are any hard feelings, though, because it was back in July when Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige said, "We love Jon. Jon did three of the best Spider-Man films ever for us. He's got lots of things going on now. So we'll probably be looking for somebody else, just because he's busy."
Who do you think should direct Spider-Man 4?