With Tobey Maguire and director Sam Raimi all but confirmed to shoot Spider-Man 4 and 5 back-to-back next year -- a massive undertaking expected to web up $50 million for Maguire -- what villains are left to menace your friendly neighbourhood wall-crawler? Electro? Rhino? Tarantula? Scorpion? No one's saying, so we took it upon ourselves to handicap some of the potential candidates:
The Lizard: Ever since Dylan Baker was introduced as one-armed Dr. Curt Connors in Spider-Man 2, fans have been anticipating this creature's Jekyll-and-Hyde-esque introduction. In comics lore, Connors, experimenting with a formula to regenerate his limb, unwittingly transforms himself into a reptilian monstrosity. Odds: Even
The Vulture: Before Marvel executives insisted Raimi shoe-horn Venom into Spider-Man 3 (just one of that sequel's many flaws), the director was reportedly toying with bringing Sir Ben Kingsley aboard as this feathered fiend. Might this be the chance for the sexy beast to spread his wings? Odds: 3-1
Man-Wolf: Remember J. Jonah Jameson's astronaut son, who Mary-Jane Watson was engaged to in Spider-Man 2? Back in the 1970s, Marvel's writers had him morph into - seriously - a space werewolf. Odds: 20-1
The Black Cat: With Kirsten Dunst's involvement in the sequels still uncertain, could this sexy clawed cat burglar be introduced as a romantic alternative for Maguire's Peter Parker, making him, for once, less of a doe-eyed sap? Odds: 5-1
Kraven the Hunter: A big-game hunter clearly inspired by The Most Dangerous Game, Kraven comes to New York City to hunt down the most challenging foe of all: The costumed web-spinner. Raimi has an acknowledged weak spot for 1960s Spider-Man -- in which Kraven was introduced -- but could even he make this bare-chested moustachioed lug believable or threatening? Odds: 10-1
'ROC' ON: For some years now, actor Charles S. Dutton of TV's Roc has refused to comment on the seven-and-a-half years he spent in prison for manslaughter after stabbing a man in a Baltimore street fight at age 17.
Now the actor -- who'll soon be seen opposite Dennis Quaid and Rob Brown in The Express, the story of the first black Heisman Trophy winner Ernie Davis -- is telling the story twice.
He's got a book deal from Random House, and he's workshopping a play called From Jail to Yale, in which he intersperses his story (which cultimated in a Masters Degree from Yale) with snippets of scenes from the works of the late playwright August Wilson.
"It wasn't that I didn't want to talk about it anymore, I just got tired of talking about it," he says of his prison time.
"I never wanted to do a book because the statute of limitations don't run out for anything in the state of Maryland. So I had to be careful about what I talked about, in particular about some of my friends. But a lot of them have passed away, so it's kind of okay to talk about it."
Dutton has been in a kind of self-imposed exile from Hollywood for a few years after buying a farm in rural Maryland. He's now back working with HBO and Quincy Jones on a mini-series about Louis Armstrong (he'd play the older Louis) and a possible movie based on Roc.
Which doesn't mean he's sending any Christmas cards to the president of HBO. He's steamed at the cable network over the series The Wire.
"All this hoopla about the great liberal bastion of society Hollywood, they ought to check out their own racism and prejudices. Just because HBO did The Wire doesn't mean a damn thing. Black folks do a lot more than just shoot drugs."
CASTING WISH: Diane Lane, whose latest romantic drama Nights in Rodanthe again casts her as an emotionally conflicted woman, knows what she'd like to play next.
"A bitch in a comedy," says the 43-year-old redhead. "Being sympathetic is a burden I'd like to shirk at this point."
