Spider-Man: No Way Home Director Jon Watts Reveals Reaction to Spider-Man 4

Jon Watts is excited to watch the MCU’s next Spider-Man movie from the audience. Watts has directed all three stand-alone Spidey movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far, but he is not involved in Spider-Man 4 at all. In an interview with Comicbook.com’s Chris Killian, he confirmed that he will be watching purely as a fan.

“It’s so exciting to just get to be a fan again,” Watts said. “Not responsible for it, I can just go enjoy it purely as a person in the audience. Yeah, I can’t wait.” We spoke to Watts primarily about his new series Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, along with his co-creator and co-showrunner Christopher Ford. The new series premieres on December 3rd on Disney+. It stars Jude Law as a charming Force-user guiding four children on a journey to get home.

Watts gave a lot of time and energy to Spider-Man before leaving the series behind. He was one of the six people credited as a screenwriter on Spider-Man: Homecoming, but not on the next two installments. He directed Spider-Man: Far From Home, and in 2022 we learned that he even performed some of the motion-capture for the character Sandman in No Way Home. Watts also did some uncredited directorial work on Venom: Let There Be Carnage.

Switching to Star Wars and the Small Screen

Surprisingly, Watts has no involvement in the MCU beyond those projects, but now he has moved on to Disney’s other massive IP. Skeleton Crew is set during the same period as The Mandalorian and other live-action Star Wars shows – in the years immediately following Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. It has been billed as a “galactic version of classic [Amblin Entertainment] coming-of-age adventure films of the ’80s,” taking inspiration from movies like The Goonies.

Skeleton Crew was first announced in February of 2022 and was filming by September 2022, meaning Watts did not have much time off after the premiere of No Way Home in December of 2021. Filming on his final Spider-Man movie wrapped in March of 2021, and by then development on Spider-Man 4 was already well underway. Watts was tapped to direct Fantastic Four: First Steps, but according to a report by Deadline, he left the project simply to take a break from big blockbuster films. Both he and Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige confirmed that the decision was amicable.

Destin Daniel Cretton – known for directing Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings – signed on to direct Fantastic Four instead, and filming is expected to begin sometime next year. That movie is scheduled to premiere on July 25, 2025, and Star Wars: Skeleton Crew premieres on Friday, December 3rd on Disney+.