Sony Reportedly Wanted The Director of VENOM to Helm SPDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY, Thankfully Marvel Had Other Plans

Sony and Marvel Studios are gearing up for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and as more behind the scenes info surfaces, we’re getting a clearer picture of how the next chapter of the MCU’s Spider era came together.

A new report reveals that before Shang-Chi filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton officially boarded the movie, Sony’s top executive had a very different director in mind, and it would have taken the franchise down a wildly different path.

After Spider-Man: No Way Home, Marvel originally set Jon Watts to jump directly into The Fantastic Four. The intense process of shooting No Way Home during the pandemic eventually drove him to step away from that film and the next Spider-Man sequel. With Watts officially out, Marvel began exploring new candidates.

But according to scooper @MyTimeToShineH, Sony Pictures chief Tom Rothman wasn’t ready to let go of Watts. The report claims Rothman "really wanted Jon Watts back for Spider-Man: Brand New Day."

When it became clear Watts wasn’t returning, Rothman considered another filmmaker. The scooper says, "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."

Feige had previously hired Cretton to direct Avengers: The Kang Dynasty before that project was reworked into Avengers: Doomsday. So, Bringing him over to Brand New Day makes complete sense for Marvel. It’s a much better choice than Fleischer, whose Venom trilogy is very mediocre filmmaking.

Venom did make a massive amount of money and launched Sony’s Spider-Verse spinoff slate, but the film didn’t land as strongly with many fans. Fleischer had delivered hits before, most notably Zombieland, though his filmography after that included mixed reception with Gangster Squad and the awful Uncharted film.

There’s also the question of tone. Marvel Studios has made it clear that the MCU version of Peter Parker is heading into a gritty street-level arc, and Cretton’s work on Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings showed he could balance emotional stakes with grounded action.

Fleischer himself has been candid recently about how Venom was developed without access to Spider-Man. His commentary sheds light on why Marvel might have hesitated to bring him into the fold for Brand New Day.

"That was the first real Spider-Man-affiliated movie," Fleischer said. "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."

He went on to explain that the film had to exist separately from Peter Parker. "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."

The director also described how the absence of Spider-Man affected the character design. "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.

Cretton is directing Spider-Man: Brand New Day from a script by returning writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers. The film brings back Tom Holland as Peter Parker and reunites him with Zendaya as MJ, Jacob Batalon as Ned Leeds, and Michael Mando as Scorpion.

The cast also includes Jon Bernthal, Mark Ruffalo, Sadie Sink, Tramell Tillman, Marvin Jones III as Tombstone, Liza Colón-Zayas, and Florence Pugh reprising Yelena Belova.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings into theaters on July 31, 2026.