By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Everybody knows that Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars are being directed by the Russo brothers, the cinematic siblings who previously brought us smash hits like Infinity War and Endgame. Before the Russos came back to the Marvel fold, though, Spider-Man: Brand New Day director Destin Daniel Cretton was supposed to direct Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, a project which died thanks to Kang star Jonathan Majors being convicted of assault and harassment.
Now, a scooper is reporting that Marvel wants Cretton to direct the next Avengers movie after Secret Wars, which would mean the studio is gambling everything on one of its rising talents.
An Offer He Can’t Refuse
This news comes to us from scooper @MyTimeToShineH, who says that Marvel’s plans for Cretton are conditional. They claim that everything depends on how well Spider-Man: Brand New Day turns out. Should that movie be as successful as others featuring everybody’s favorite web-head, then Marvel will pull out the big chair and let Cretton direct the next Avengers movie after Secret Wars.
Of course, Destin Daniel Cretton is not new to Marvel, having previously directed Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. That movie (which Cretton co-wrote) was a critical darling, earning a 92 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes (notably, the movie has an even higher 98 percent audience score). That film was a modest financial success, too, earning $432.2 million against a budget of $150-$200 million (remember, the additional marketing costs always cut into how much blockbuster superhero films like this ultimately bring home).Â
While Shang-Chi was a hit movie, it didn’t bring in the profit of a vintage Marvel movie, and this film ended up being an early warning sign of the superhero fatigue that has been plaguing the studio for years. Now, Cretton’s sophomore superhero film, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, is set to release in theaters on July 31st, 2026. According to the scooper, this film’s success may be enough to convince Marvel that Cretton can fill the big boots left behind by the Russos (who had to prove themselves with two Captain America movies before getting chosen as the directors for Infinity War and Endgame).
Does Whatever A Spider Can
With that being said, it may be difficult for Cretton to top the performance of Spider-Man: No Way Home, the Jon Watts film (he also directed Homecoming and Far From Home) that earned $1.921 billion against a budget of only $200 million. That ambitious multiversal movie earned nearly 10 times as much as it took to make, whereas Shang-Chi earned less than three times its own production budget. Therefore, if Brand New Day is only a modest success like Shang-Chi before it, Cretton may not get the Avengers directing gig, no matter how good his Spider-Man film is.
That may not sound fair, but Marvel has been reeling from superhero fatigue in the last few years: The Marvels lost the studio plenty of money, and outside of outliers like Deadpool & Wolverine, modern MCU movies typically make far less money than they did in the period leading up to Endgame (just look at the middling performance of Thunderbolts and The Fantastic Four: First Steps, both of which made less than James Gunn’s Superman). Brand New Day becoming as successful as the Spider-Man films before it would likely prove to executives that he has what it takes to help usher the MCU back into a golden age.
At this junction, it’s hard to tell if Destin Daniel Cretton is ready to be the next big architect of the MCU. Shang-Chi was a modest hit, but it was released over five years ago. Like Marvel’s own executives, we’ll be looking to Spider-Man: Brand New Day as a barometer of whether this talented director is ready to play a larger part in Hollywood’s biggest cinematic universe. If so, he’ll have one of the greatest creative responsibilities of all: rebuilding that universe in the wake of it getting completely rebooted in Avengers: Secret Wars.
