How little-known indie director Jon Watts got handed the keys to Marvel’s Spider-Man franchise

Jon Watts was in the back of a taxi speeding toward New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport in late June when he got a phone call that changed everything: Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios were hiring him to direct the next film in the Spider-Man franchise.

Watts was asked not to tell anyone until the official announcement the next day. So all he could do was sit there, stunned and alone, as the cab hurtled along at frightening speed. “This would be a great ending to a movie,” he thought. “I get this incredible news and then I die.”

Four weeks later, Watts sits outside a coffee shop on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, a copy of the autobiography of ‘70s punk rocker Richard Hell on the table in front of him. Tall and lanky, Watts has an outwardly low-key, unflappable demeanour befitting someone who grew up in a quiet town in rural Colorado. Still, he still can’t quite wrap his head around the fact that at the age of 34, with just two low-budget features to his name, including the thriller Cop Car, he has landed one of the most coveted directing gigs in Hollywood.

“Every once in a while I’ll remember again and I’ll just smile,” he says. “It’s been a whirlwind.”

On the face of it, Cop Car seems an unlikely springboard to a bigbudget comic-book movie. Made for just US$800,000 and based on a recurring anxiety dream Watts has had since childhood, the minimalist neo-noir recounts the story of two young boys who find an abandoned police cruiser in the woods and take it for a joyride that turns harrowing when a corrupt small-town sheriff (Kevin Bacon) comes looking for the car. More concerned with slowboiling tension than full-on action, with sparse dialogue for long stretches, the movie’s biggest set piece is a shoot-out between two people on a lonely stretch of highway.

But after premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Cop Car showed up on the radar of executives at Marvel and Sony, who were planning to reboot the Spider- Manseries after the previous film underperformed. Greatly impressed with what Watts had accomplished on a shoestring budget, they called him in for a meeting.