It's the casting process that never ends, despite the fact that the movie in question has a release date and a whole chunk of money riding on it. For months since they announced that they were rebooting the entire Spider-Man franchise, Sony has proceeded with caution through every major decision, from picking a director (Marc Webb) to the agonizing process of figuring out who will play Spidey. The rumors have been leaking out for weeks, with names like Josh Hutcherson, Andrew Garfield, Anton Yelchin, Logan Lerman, Aaron Johnson, Jamie Bell, Frank Dillane, Michael Angarano, Alden Ehrenreich and who knows who else batted around endlessly. For a minute we thought Jamie Bell had the job. Then Hutcherson said he was still in the running. With the exception of the short-lived Donald for Spider-Man experiment, most of us gave up caring about this a long time ago.

Now, according to Deadline, we may soon be put out of our Peter Parker misery and move on to worrying about who will play all the other roles. The studio reportedly viewed screen tests from all of their finalists on Friday, and is "getting closer" to finding the right actor. They're planning to begin production by the end of this year in order to make the July 3, 2012 release date, and given that no one else has even been rumored for other roles, yeah, it's definitely high time they stop dragging their heels.

Pretty much all of the names mentioned above came in for screen tests, though Hutcherson may very well be out of the running after all, and Dillane is likely to choose drama school over a small chance at webslinging anyway. And don't take any of this all that seriously-- there may still be more names added to the list. Feel free to go back to tearing out your hair and feeling nostalgic for the simpler days when Tobey Maguire could simply be dragged back to the role kicking and screaming.