When Marvel and Sony announced the new star and director of the solo Spider-Man movie, the non-initiated were collectively floored by these randos making waves. Chances are if they didn’t know Tom Holland, then they certainly didn’t know who Jon Watts was, either. As we all keep learning more about these new faces, Marvel’s head honcho Kevin Feige has been speaking about their qualifications, but he recently shed light on what specifically made the studios choose Watts to direct.
Feige told Collider in an interview that he sat down with Sony’s Amy Pascal and Tom Rothman and Marvel’s Jeremy Latcham and Louis D’Esposito to pick the candidates. As he said, there were a couple “very, very, very good” final round hopefuls, but they were ultimately impressed with Watt’s growth as a filmmaker.
We really liked his movie Cop Car, we met with him four, five, or six times, and each time he had more and more interesting things to say. And at Marvel, it always comes down to ultimately, ‘We can make a movie with this person for two years, we could spend almost every day with this person for two years. Let’s go.’
In the beginning of the MCU, directors seemed to come and go, but now certain filmmakers are owning their properties. Joss Whedon headed up Avengers before handing them over to the Russo brothers, who also helm the latest Captain America films. James Gunn is owning Guardians of the Galaxy, with Vol. 2 coming out in 2017. And with folks like Sam Raimi and Marc Webb leading the charge on the previous two film iterations of Spidey, Watts could potentially be in this for the long haul. Though, as Edgar Wright and Alan Taylor found out, Marvel is not for every director, so we’ll see how Watts’ experience shakes out.
Watts will direct the 19-year-old Holland in a Spider-Man film set in the character’s high school years. He will make his first appearance alongside Captain America, Iron Man, Black Panther, Ant-Man and more Marvel heroes in Captain America: Civil War (out on May 6, 2016) before headling his own movie on July 28, 2017. He was said to have reported directly to the set as soon as his casting was made official. Feige said recently that the solo Spider-Man movie will be made in the style of a John Hughes movie, explaining how in high school everything seems like life or death. Holland, in turn, has already mastered his parkour skills, which will certainly come in handy when he’s executing backflips off of rooftops.
We’ll surely keep tabs on the latest details on Spider-Man.