Destin Daniel Cretton’s Rise from Indie Flix to Marvel Blockbusters
By James Moreau | 05 Oct, 2025

The writer/director of Shang-Chi will helm the next Spider-Man epic.

Japanese American filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton will direct the Spider-Man blockbuster slated for June 2026 release.

Cretton’s career hit a new high in 2021 when he helmed the Marvel movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings — a project he also co-wrote.  The movie broke the Labor Day weekend box office record and ultimately grossed $432 million worldwide, nearly three times its budget.

Just Mercy released in 2019 is Cretton’s most critically acclaimed studio feature.  He directed and co-wrote the biographical legal drama starring Michael B. Jordan and Jaime Foxx.  It won Outstanding Motion Picture at the NAACP Image Awards.

In 2017 two of his works were released — The Glass Castle and The Shack.  The latter is the only feature he wrote but didn’t direct.

Cretton’s first films were Short Term 12 in 2013 and I Am Not a Hipster in 2012.   Short Term 12 won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at its debut at the South by Southwest Film Festival.  The feature was developed from a short film he used as the thesis for his master’s degree at San Diego State.

Cretton’s undergraduate degree was in communications from San Diego’s Point Loma Nazarene University.  Destin Daniel Cretton was born and raised in Haiku, Hawaii.