Spider-Man: No Way Home director Jon Watts was supposed to follow the 2021 movie with The Fantastic Four. However, the gruelling experience of shooting the threequel in a pandemic saw him walk away from Marvel's First Family and the web-slinger.
Ultimately, Marvel Studios turned to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton to helm Spider-Man: Brand New Day; he'd been hired to direct Avengers: The Kang Dynasty before it became Avengers: Doomsday and the Russo Brothers returned.
We never did get a shortlist of candidates who were eyed for the next Spider-Man movie, but scooper @MyTimeToShineH has revealed that Sony boss Tom Rothman "really wanted Jon Watts back for Spider-Man: Brand New Day."
However, "When it became clear that it wasn’t going to happen, there was a short period when he wanted Venom's Ruben Fleischer to direct. Kevin Feige rejected the idea and instead courted Destin Daniel Cretton to do it."
Needless to say, Feige made the right decision. Venom was a box office success, but it wasn't a movie that most fans enjoyed. Fleischer's credits are a mixed bag, too, with Zombieland his biggest highlight. It was followed by Gangster Squad, Venom, and Uncharted, among others, all of which received mixed-to-negative reviews.
Had Fleischer helmed Spider-Man: Brand New Day, perhaps we'd have finally seen Tom Holland's Peter Parker share the screen with Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock. Marvel Studios is rumoured to have its own plans for the Symbiote, likely with Mac Gargan wearing the alien suit.
"That was the first real Spider-Man-affiliated movie," Fleischer recently said of his Venom experience. "We were all trying to figure out exactly what that wants to be. 'Venom' was always defined by Spider-Man—our movie couldn’t feature Spider-Man. So it created an interesting challenge."
"From my memory of it, granted it was a while ago, but from my memory of it, it was always distinct from Spider-Man," Fleischer added, confirming that the movie wasn't made with an eventual crossover in mind. "Maybe there was the possibility of them crossing paths down the road, but inherent to ours was that it couldn’t be defined by that."
"It’s funny because in the comics, Venom has a spider on his chest, and that’s because he derives from Spider-Man. We had to come up with a whole new origin story and actually create a different pattern on his chest, unique for the film, because it wouldn’t have made sense if he had a spider on his chest if he had no affiliation with Spider-Man," he added, sharing that "it all worked out the way it was supposed to," given the franchise's eventual financial success.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings helmer Destin Daniel Cretton directs Spider-Man: Brand New Day from a script by returning Spider-Man franchise writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers.
Tom Holland plays Spider-Man in a cast that also includes Jon Bernthal (The Punisher), Mark Ruffalo (The Hulk), Zendaya (MJ), Sadie Sink, Michael Mando (The Scorpion), Tramell Tillman, Marvin Jones III (Tombstone), Jacob Batalon (Ned Leeds), and Liza Colón-Zayas. Thunderbolts* star Florence Pugh is expected to reprise her Thunderbolts* role as Yelena Belova.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day will be released in theaters on July 31, 2026.