The Director Who Made Short Term 12 Now Holds India's Biggest Foreign Opening

Spider-Man: Brand New Day has crossed 109.95 crore net in India in two days, the fastest any non-Indian film has reached that mark here, and it is directed by a filmmaker whose breakthrough was a small, unshowy drama about a group home for teenagers.

Cretton made Short Term 12 in 2013 on a budget most Hindi films would spend on a song sequence. Shang-Chi moved him into Marvel's scale in 2021. Brand New Day is the largest thing he has directed, and the India numbers alone would rank among the biggest results of his career.

The pattern is not unusual in Hollywood, where studios have spent a decade recruiting indie directors for tentpoles, but the outcomes vary wildly. This one has landed on the right side of that gamble, at least commercially, with a worldwide total already past 270 million dollars.