UPDATE! New information from Sony Pictures indicates that Lerman may not be in the running to play Spidey after all. Full details here.

He’s been rumored to be one of the contenders all along and now HitFix claims Logan Lerman is the frontrunner to be the new Peter Parker in Sony’s much loathed Spider-Man reboot.

So who’s Logan Lerman? A few weeks ago you might have seen him as the lead in Percy Jackson and the Olympians. He’s eighteen, which makes him the right age for Sony’s plan to roll the clock back and Spidey, put him back in high school, and fill him full of teenage, Twilighty, angst. He also sort of looks the part. One problem: He can’t act. He’s mediocre at best in Percy Jackson, a movie which required little of him other than that he looked scared whenever some guy on the set yelled “monster!” and waved a tennis ball at him.

Lerman is a huge step down from the likes of Tobey Maguire and if he really is a frontrunner as HitFix claims, then it’s a pretty clear indicator of the dismal direction Sony’s Spider-Man franchise is headed. But then if you’ve been following along with this project at all, you already knew that.

There's some hope here though. At best Lerman's only a frontrunner, which means the role isn't locked down. Anton Yelchin, Jesse Eisenberg, Patrick Fugit and Johnny Simmons have also been rumored to be up for the part and at least two of those actors might actually do a good job, if they're hired instead.