Credit: Marvel StudiosJon Watts has directed all three of the MCU’s Spider-Man films to date — but Marvel reportedly has another name in mind for the next installment.
According to industry insider Daniel RPK, the studio is more interested in hiring Drew Goddard for the film.
Goddard is best known by Marvel fans for his work on the original Netflix series Daredevil, where he was executive producer and showrunner, as well as writing two episodes. He has previously also worked on projects such as Lost, The Good Place, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
This isn’t the first time Goddard has been linked to Spider-Man. Back in 2015, when Marvel first acquired the cinematic rights to Peter Parker from Sony, there were rumors that he was in talks to helm Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017).
While this role later went to Jon Watts, Goddard’s time may have come back around if the rumors are true. For now, there’s no talk on why (if at all) Marvel would want to replace Watts after he led Homecoming, Far From Home (2019), and No Way Home (2021), especially after No Way Home was met with such resounding success both at the box office and with critics.
No Way Home remains Marvel’s most successful film since Avengers: Endgame (2019) and proved particularly popular with fans due to its inclusion of both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s iterations of the character.
Although not officially announced, Marvel is said to be hard at work on Spider-Man 4. Tom Holland is set to return as Peter Parker and has described attending very early stage meetings with Marvel about the film. It’s thought that he’ll be joined by both Zendaya and Jacob Batalon, who will reprise their roles of MJ and Ned respectively — despite their memories of Peter being erased at the climax of No Way Home.