Which young actor is going to get to do whatever a spider can?
That’s the question the multi-billion-dollar Spider-Man franchise is hinging on as director Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer) prepares to reboot the series with a new hero now that Tobey Maguire has retired his tights.
One name that continues to come up is Logan Lerman, last seen starring in the disappointing fantasy Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. In fact, just this week the website HitFix reported Lerman is a lock to replace Maguire — a report that’s since been disputed elsewhere. So until there’s an official announcement, the 18-year-old remains just another contender, alongside the likes of Anton Yelchin and Jesse Eisenberg.
As top-secret as the identity of the friendly neighbourhood wall-crawler is how the fourth film will distinguish itself from its predecessors when it opens in July 2012.
After all, will fans accept a reboot just five years after 2007’s Spider-Man 3 (which, let’s remember, was popular enough to gross $890 million worldwide)?
Obviously screenwriter James Vanderbilt hopes so. “You try to make the best movie you can. It’s as simple and as complicated as that,” he says, understandably tight-lipped about the movie’s plot and tone.
“There’s probably a Sony sniper with a scope pointed at me right now.”
NOT CARREYING ON: Phillip Morris can’t get enough love apparently.
The long-delayed "I Love You Phillip Morris," starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor, has been shelved again, reports the Los Angeles Times.
The fact-based black comedy, which stars Carrey as a con-man who falls for McGregor, debuted at 2009’s Sundance film festival but has languished ever since, undoubtedly in part because of its gay-themed subject matter. Most recently it was supposed to open next month.
Now reports suggest it may be getting yet another new release date — sometime this fall.
MANN TO MANN: Father-daughter directorial handoffs are a fairly new phenomenon, the latest being Ami Mann, daughter of Michael Mann, who is about to film her first feature in New Orleans.
That would be the thriller "The Fields," with Sam Worthington and “it” girl child star Chloe Grace Moretz, about a detective who investigates 30 years of cold-case murders in Texas.
The case for daughters-of was made impressively by Lost In Translation’s Sofia Coppola who was, for years, the only woman to be nominated for a best-director Oscar (eclipsed this year by The Hurt Locker’s Kathryn Bigelow). Coppola did win for best original screenplay.
On the other hand, hopes were high for Alison Eastwood, whose crushingly depressing feature directing debut, Rails & Ties, made its bow at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2007 and headed to video faster than a freight train. She hasn’t sat in a director’s chair since.
