Jon Watts directed Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Far From Home, and Spider-Man: No Way Home for Marvel Studios in very quick succession. The latter was not an easy movie to make, particularly as it was shot during the height of the pandemic.
Even before announcing that he was stepping away from the MCU, Watts had intended to move on from the Spider-Man franchise. The filmmaker was set to direct The Fantastic Four reboot for Marvel Studios, but ultimately walked away from that, too, shifting focus to Star Wars: Skeleton Crew on Disney+.
With that, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton has taken over the wall-crawler's MCU-set adventures, starting with this month's Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
Plans for a Shang-Chi sequel were put on hold, and Cretton had been set to direct Avengers: The Kang Dynasty before the movie was scrapped and the Russos returned to helm Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars.
After developing Wonder Man for Marvel Television, Cretton is looking to keep his MCU momentum going with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, but why was he the right choice to deliver a street-level Peter Parker story that's more in line with the comics?
"Destin has really blown all our minds, and we hope that he will continue to make Spider-Man movies with us," producer Amy Pascal told SFX Magazine. "The thing about Destin is he's an incredibly gifted action director, but there is not one thing in this movie that doesn't come from emotion and heart and character."
"As much as we loved working with Jon, and he made a certain kind of movie, Destin has made something really special too."
Watts' Spider-Man movies were defined by their high school setting, whereas Cretton's movie will focus on a web-slinger who is now in college and a little more mature than when we last saw him.
"In most of the Spider-Man movies - the ones that came before the Tom Holland ones - no one knows his identity," Pascal later said of what makes Spider-Man: Brand New Day different from what's come before. "They're always about being Peter or being Spider-Man, and in almost every story, he decides to give up being Spider-Man so that he can have the life that Peter Parker really wants."
"So we tried to do the opposite here and give ourselves a really hard challenge, which was for Peter to be losing his humanity and choosing only to be Spider-Man - and then realising that's not possible," she added. "[Tom Holland is] so smart. And by the time you're on the fourth movie and you've played Spider-Man for 10 years, you know who Peter is - and there can't be a better source than him."
In a movie that features appearances from The Punisher, The Hulk, several villains, and perhaps even the MCU debut of Jean Grey, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is going to be a Spidey movie like no other. It's down to Cretton to make sure all those disparate elements come together and actually work.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings into theaters on July 31.