The Search Is Over: Spider-Man Star, Director Announced By Marvel

As speculation swirled the last few weeks over who would play the new Spider-Man shared by Marvel and Sony and who would direct the wall-crawler’s rebooted adventures in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s probably fitting that a big announcement waited until both roles were filled.

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Now they are. Marvel revealed today that Tom Holland will play Spider-Man and Jon Watts will direct the character’s next solo film, which will be co-produced by both studios and hit theaters on July 28, 2017. Interestingly, there was no official confirmation that Holland would play Spidey in Captain America: Civil War, so we’ll have to call his expected appearance in that film next year the worst kept secret in super hero movies.

The 19-year old Holland hails from England, and got his big screen acting debut in 2012 with Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts in The Impossible. He was rumored to be Sony’s top choice to play Peter Parker while Marvel preferred Charlie Plummer.

All you need to know about Watts is that he’s new enough to filmmaking that he doesn’t even have his own Wikipedia page yet. That should change any minute with this gig, as he rides the buzz from Cop Car, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and is due in theaters in August, to become the latest inexperienced director to be entrusted with a major Marvel character — a strategy that has served the MCU pretty well to date.

“As with James Gunn, Joss Whedon, and the Russo brothers, we love finding new and exciting voices to bring these characters to life,” Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige said to Marvel.com. “We spent a lot of time with Jon and find his take and work inspiring.”

We’ll see if Watts and Holland can reverse the sliding fortunes of Spider-Man in movie theaters in 2017, but it’s almost guaranteed we’ll see and hear from the new web-slinger before that.

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