Shang-Chi filmmaker is leading candidate to direct Spider-Man 4 with Tom Holland

Marvel is closing in on a filmmaker to take the reins (webs?) of the fourth Spider-Man movie starring Tom Holland — and he's no stranger.

Destin Daniel Cretton, who helmed 2021's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, is the leading candidate to direct the next Spidey film, Entertainment Weekly has learned. The Hollywood Reporter first reported the news.

Cretton was previously in talks to direct the fifth Avengers movie when it was known as Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and was to star the now-ousted actor Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror. Cretton departed the project in November, and the film will now be titled Avengers: Doomsday, directed by Joe and Anthony Russo and starring Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom.

Cretton is also supposed to be planning a sequel to Shang-Chi, which starred Simu Liu as the titular hero, but it's unclear how that would fit into his Spider-Man schedule.

Plot details for the untitled Spider-Man 4 are still under wraps, though it will follow the events of 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home, which brought in previous Hollywood Spider-Men Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield to play their versions of Peter Parker alongside Holland's iteration, thanks to a multiverse spell gone wrong that brought alternate-reality Spideys and their famous adversaries into the MCU. The movie ended with Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange casting a spell that made everyone forget Peter Parker, including his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) and girlfriend MJ (Zendaya).

Jon Watts directed the previous three Holland-led Spider-Man movies. He's since been working in the Star Wars realm on the Disney+ series Skeleton Crew.

Last year, Holland told reporters that he'd "been actively engaging in conversations about what it could potentially look like for a fourth rendition of my character." He added, "Whether or not we can find a way to do justice to the character is another thing. I feel very protective over Spider-Man. I feel very, very lucky that we were able to work on a franchise that got better with each movie, that got more successful with each movie, which I think is really rare, and I want to protect his legacy."

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

Spider-Man 4 marks the latest partnership between Disney's Marvel Studios, which produces the Avengers-centric MCU films and shows, and Sony Pictures, which releases its own line of Spider-Man-adjacent movies. On the docket for Sony's Marvel lineup this year are Venom: The Last Dance and Kraven the Hunter.