SAN DIEGO -- Spider-senses are tingling. Could Spider-Man 3 mark the last spin for the wildly-popular comic book film franchise?
Sure, and J. Jonah Jameson just smoked his last stogie.
Harder to answer is, will Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst return for more web-spinning adventures?
"(Spider-Man 3) does tie up a lot of storylines," acknowledges Dunst, who joined Maguire, director Sam Raimi as well as newcomers Topher Grace, Thomas Haden Church and Bryce Dallas Howard at this weekend's Comic-Con International.
But she stops short of reiterating demands her character, Spidey's sweetheart Mary Jane Watson, be killed off. "If there's a good story to tell (for Spidey 4), I'll be there."
For the time-being, Maguire, who sounds similarly noncommittal about sequels numbered higher than three, says he's just happy this episode takes Peter Parker into new terrain.
"There's a continuity of character you have to keep up. You don't want to create new things for Peter (out of the blue), but I don't necessarily want the same scene played again and again ... For an actor, there was nothing stale about it."
Nor is it likely to feel stale for the 7,000 fans who crammed the Convention Center hall to see Raimi unveil a few minutes of thrilling -- but unfinished -- footage.
Specifically, the scenes confirmed one of Hollywood's worst-kept secrets -- that Grace portrays the black-skinned Venom, one of Spider-Man's most popular foes.
There are still many questions about the next Spidey flick.
Does Gwen Stacy, who Howard is playing, die, as she did famously in the comic book, or does Mary Jane? Does James Franco take on the mantle of the Green Goblin? And what about the photos circulating on the web of Church sharing a scene with Cliff Robertson, presumably reprising his role as Parker's murdered uncle, Ben? Church, as previously announced, plays the shape-shifting Sandman.
"I'm actually not even sure I'm in the movie," Church says when pressed. "How vague can you get?"
Says Dunst, "I never know what to say. Basically, Mary Jane is still an actress and you can see where it was heading towards in the last film with Peter. She's emotionally more adult in this one and there's a lot more at stake because they're together."
Sandman was always one of Raimi's favourite villains. Venom, however, was not. But he agreed to incorporate the character into the sequel to appease fans who grew up with Venom in the '80s.
One of those kids, it turns out, was Grace, who remembers reading Spider-Man comics during the period "when Todd MacFarlane was illustrating them and Venom was coming into existence."
For the uneducated, Venom is an alien symbiote who grafts himself onto Peter Parker. When Parker resists the symbiote's sociopathic ways, the creature then bonds with Grace's character, Eddie Brock, a professional rival of Parker's.
Explains Grace, "It's a case study in character. (Brock) has the same job (as Parker), the same taste in women, the same super powers, but had a really bad upbringing ... He truly loves being evil ... Like I told Sam, 'With great power comes great fun.' "
