Throughout the ‘90s and the ‘00s, Johnny Depp commanded the screen every year with his best performances, such as Jack Sparrow, Sweeney Todd, Edward Scissorhands, and more. Then, when allegations from the Depp Vs. Heard defamation trial made headlines, Depp’s roles were affected, like being dropped from Fantastic Beasts 3 and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Now that the Oscar nominee is returning to main stream moies with Day Drinker, he doesn’t prefer fans to think of this as a “comeback.”

Ever since Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s defamation trial came to a close in 2022, the transformative actor has been slowly making his way back into movies. His first post-trial movie, Jeanne du Barry, premiered at Cannes with Depp reportedly feeling “fantastic” about his new chapter. However, the Ed Wood actor previously told The L.A. Times why he doesn’t prefer people use the term “comeback” to describe his return to movies:

What Johnny Depp could be referring to is all of the new career chapters he’s made throughout his life. Starting off in the industry as a teen idol, Depp made a name for himself in A Nightmare on Elm Street and in the police drama series 21 Jump Street. However, he hated being thought of as a teen heartthrob. Therefore, you could argue that his “comeback” as a serious actor came from starring in the title role of Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands, which led to him being one of Burton’s most frequently chosen actors for his projects.

While Johnny Depp’s Tim Burton movies and other artsy films like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas showed the actor’s extensive range, they didn’t earn a lot of money at the box office. So you can say that another career milestone of Depp’s came from playing the lovable trickster Jack Sparrow in The Pirates of the Caribbean movies (which are streaming on your Disney+ subscription). He went from a quirky cult status star to a global superstar.

Jeanne du Barry may have highlighted Johnny Depp’s tense, French return to movies with a seven-minute standing ovation at Cannes. But, its decision to premiere at the festival left a selected screening. Fortunately, Depp’s major Hollywood return will come from the Marc Webb thriller Day Drinker. Reuniting with his frequent co-star Penélope Cruz, the bankable actor will play a cruise ship bartender who meets a mysterious day drinker, only for the pair to be wrapped up in a criminal plot. Based on the Lionsgate film’s first look photo with Depp looking like a different person, I can see his knack for transformative roles will be making a return, too.

Johnny Depp may not prefer to think of his return to movies as a “comeback,” considering how many returns he’s made to Hollywood. However, there’s no doubt that his newest Hollywood role in Day Drinker will mark another significant chapter in the actor’s life.

Once upon a time, many Disney Princesses may have fit into the same glass slippers, but that’s hardly the case anymore. First, Disney Animation started telling stories depicting more types of women with more personality types. Second, the studio acquired Pixar and branched out even further, and finally, Disney purchased additional studios and brands that brought with them an entire back catalog of princesses. One of those, of course, came from Star Wars, and during our interview with director Marc Webb and star Rachel Zegler ahead of Snow White’s release, we slipped Princess Leia into a Princess trivia game to see if we could fool them.

It turns out the answer is no. We asked the pair what Disney Princess said “stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder.” It took Marc Webb a few seconds to work out what we were trying to do, but Rachel Zegler nosed it out almost immediately and was clearly delighted thinking about Princess Leia standing alongside Snow White and the other classic characters the Mouse House was built atop. You can check out a clip of the fun moment below…

The fun exchange happened during our game of Disney Princess Total Recall. The rules were simple. We asked Webb and Zegler for their guesses on which Disney Princesses said various classic lines we read off. They each wrote their answers down on a board and then flipped them around. I won’t spoil anything, but I will say that one was a lot more confident than the other. You can find out who by watching the video below…

Of course the reason we got together with Zegler, Gadot and Webb was to hype Snow White. Disney’s live action remake is about to hit theaters this weekend, and while the fans haven’t had a chance to weigh in yet, many critics have already given their say. Here at CinemaBlend, we gave the movie 3 ½ stars and were particularly into Zegler’s performance as the titular character. Most other critics have been positive about her work too, though reviews for the overall film have been a bit all over the board.

After some initial controversies and negative momentum during production over the decision to use CGI dwarfs and some comments Zegler made about aspects of the original that feel dated, those involved have worked hard to try and right the ship. Zegler has been extremely positive during her press tour and has even rocked some Snow White inspired fashion. The film is projected to do around $50M or so at the box office during its debut weekend, but its long-term fate will likely come down to whether word of mouth is good and eventually convinces casual moviegoers to check out the live action remake.

A lot of controversy has surrounded the live-action remake of Snow White, but as we get closer to its release on the 2025 movie calendar, many are wondering about the film itself. Disney’s live-action remakes have been hit or miss, and some are already predicting box office troubles for Snow White. However, many of those who attended an early screening of the movie have positive first reactions.

Rachel Zegler portrays Disney’s first princess, with Gal Gadot taking on evil stepmother duties. So what is the early response to the upcoming Disney movie? Critic Christopher Mills writes on X that the year’s biggest surprise so far is that this “controversial” and “hated” film is actually decent. Mills praises Zegler as the titular character, saying:

With other Disney live-action remakes in the works including Lilo & Stitch and Moana, they may have to work hard to outshine Snow White, given what Tori Brazier of Metro UK thinks of director Marc Webb’s movie. Brazier says:

Like many Disney fans, Skyler Shuler of DisInsider was wary of this project, but after seeing it, Shuler says this is a must-see, joining others in calling it one of the best live-action remakes yet:

Katcy Stephan of Variety calls Rachel Zegler a “supernova,” while also complimenting the new music and the depth that’s given to the story. The love story is pretty sweet, too, Stephan says:

ScreenRant's Ash Crossan’s biggest complaint with the movie seems to be the princess’ hair, though that doesn’t stop Rachel Zegler’s gorgeous voice in the overall “charming” movie. Crossan says:

The verdict isn’t unanimous, however, with at least one critic voicing disappointment in the upcoming kids movie. Carl Kaka of Future of the Force says live-action remakes in general don’t replicate the fun and enjoyment of their originals, and this movie “just wasn’t for me.” Kaka continues:

If you want to see what all the fuss is about and draw your own conclusions about Rachel Zegler, Gal Gadot and the rest, you don’t have to wait too much longer. Snow White is set to hit theaters on Friday, March 21, and if you want to revisit the animated classic in the meantime, that’s available to stream with a Disney+ subscription.

Before the infamous Depp Vs. Heard trial, Johnny Depp’s face was all over the big screen throughout the ‘90s and ‘00s. His greatest roles that have truly brought out his versatility and range have included playing Edward Scissorhands, Captain Jack Sparrow, Sweeney Todd, and more. Two years after a verdict was announced in Depp’s favor, the Oscar-nominee is finally ready to make a major Hollywood comeback and it involves The Amazing Spider-Man director Marc Webb.

Johnny Depp’s defamation lawsuit against ex-wife Amber Heard, as seen in the Netflix docuseries Depp V. Heard, interrupted the momentum of his acting career. Due to the massive attention both parties faced during the trial, Depp’s career faced consequences like being reportedly dropped out of the Pirates of the Caribbean reboot and Fantastic Beasts where he was replaced by Mads Mikkelsen.

After a verdict was reached where the 21 Jump Street actor was paid $1 million by Heard’s insurance, Johnny Depp is finally ready to make a major Hollywood comeback with The Amazing Spider-Man director Marc Webb on board. According to a Lionsgate press release, Johnny Depp will be reuniting with frequent co-star Penélope Cruz in the upcoming thriller Day Drinker about a cruise ship bartender and a mysterious day drinker who get wrapped up in a criminal underworld. Lionsgate Chair Adam Fogelson commented about high hopes for the upcoming movie as well as the gifted talent who will be part of it:

I’m already excited for this new project to get up and ready. Other than Marc Webb doing a great job constructing action sequences, another superb quality involves creating chemistry between his leads like we’ve seen in The Amazing Spider-Man films and 500 Days of Summer. I have a good feeling that Webb will deliver plenty of steamy scenes between Depp and Cruz we'll enjoy seeing.

Day Drinker will also be produced by Thunder Road’s Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee, responsible for the John Wick franchise, and Adam Kolbrenner who’s produced The Tomorrow War, Free Guy, and Prisoners. We also can’t ignore that Fast X screenwriter Zach Dean will be involved in the project. With all of these important names from successful action films coming together to make this upcoming thriller, I have a feeling we’ll be getting an entertaining piece of high-stakes action to be excited about.

Lionsgate’s new film will present the fourth collaboration between Johnny Depp and Penélope Cruz who shared the screen together in Blow, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and Murder on the Orient Express. The two are such good friends that the Spanish actress defended Depp during the Amber Heard court case who she said provided him “sweetness, protection and kindness” when they worked on Pirates together. With a fourth collaboration under their belt, I’m sure their chemistry in Day Drinker will continue to go strong.

The What’s Eating Gilbert Grape actor has slowly been making a career comeback. His first post-trial movie Jeanne Du Barry debuted at Cannes and was greeted with a seven-minute standing ovation. Depp also directed his second movie in 27 years called Modi, Three Days on the Wing of Madness portraying 72 hours of Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani’s life. The American actor also has The Carnival at the End of Days expecting to be filmed in January where he’ll be playing Satan. The bankable star even has new teeth to show he’s ready to turn his health and career around. Considering Jeanne Du Barry and Modi were both smaller-scale projects, something tells me a blockbuster like Day Drinker will put Depp’s name back on the map.

Johnny Depp collaborating with Marc Webb is the Hollywood comeback we’ve all been waiting for. With Webb’s knack for visuals and emotional depth and Depp's multiskilled range coming through in a new role, I don’t see where we can go wrong. Take a look at our upcoming 2025 movie releases in case Day Drinker ends up there.

One of Disney’s latest live-action retellings, Snow White, has been underway in the United Kingdom’s famous Pinewood Studios. On the set of the movie starring Rachel Zegler as Snow White and Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen, a fire broke out. “Enormous flames” reportedly even spread as the production was being set up ahead of filming. 

The fire was said to have erupted at the Richard Attenborough stage at Pinewood Studios, which is famous for being the set of Marvel, Star Wars films and other live-action Disney movies. This includes projects like 2015’s Cinderella and the upcoming Little Mermaid remake among other upcoming Disney movies. “No filming was underway” and there were no casualties, per Variety.

The stage for Snow White is currently under construction and saw a tree caught alight, reportedly leading to a large fire at Pinewood Studios. It was detailed per photos (via The Sun) that huge flames next to a cottage then took flight, causing thick smoke to reach the ceiling of the studio and billow outside the building itself. 

According to The Sun’s anonymous source, the Snow White set is made up of “a lot of wood” and following the tree catching fire to the rest of the set the crew on deck “evacuated without injury.” The Buckinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service confirmed the blaze on Tuesday afternoon, describing the situation as a “fire in [an] industrial unit.” According to the service, twelve appliances (fire trucks and/or pumps, ladders) came to the scene along with the local police and an ambulance service. 

This is not the first incident of this nature at Pinewood Studios. Previously, a set on the same property burned down while Ridley Scott was filming 1985’s Legend, which starred Tom Cruise. A fire also occurred after production wrapped on Daniel Craig’s first outing as James Bond in Casino Royale back in 2006, and during the production of No Time To Die in 2019 (his last time as the 007 character), a controlled explosion caused damage to the exterior of the stage as well. 

Snow White is scheduled to begin filming this month, with West Side Story breakout star Rachel Zegler as the first Disney princess and Wonder Woman’s Gal Gadot taking on the Evil Queen. Per the reports, no actors were on set during the fire but Zegler was in London after being part of two award shows over the weekend, the BAFTAS and UK Critics Choice Awards. She’s apparently in New York to attend the National Board of Review Awards after being nominated for Best Actress for Maria in West Side Story on Tuesday. 

Snow White will be a musical directed by The Amazing Spider-Man and (500) Days of Summer filmmaker Marc Webb. It will feature new music from Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who previously wrote the music for La La Land, The Greatest Showman and Dear Evan Hansen. The script was written by Girl on the Train’s Erin Cressida Wilson and Ladybird and Little Women’s Greta Gerwig reportedly also involved.

There are few American organizations more infamous than the Westboro Baptist Church, a hate group that has been known for terrorizing individuals and protesting funerals. Now the story of how one of the leaders of the Church managed to reform and escape is coming to the big screen, courtesy of big names like Reese Witherspoon, Marc Webb, and Nicholas Hornby.

Conde Nast Entertainment has issued a press release announcing the start of development on This Above All - a film that will tell the true story of former Westboro Baptist Church member Megan Phelps-Roper, the granddaughter of the WBC's original founder. The film will be based on a November 2015 article that journalist Adrian Chen wrote for The New Yorker (titled "Conversion Via Twitter"), as well as Phelps-Roper's own upcoming memoir. Nick Hornby will be taking care of screenplay duties, Marc Webb is attached to direct, and Reese Witherspoon is set to produce alongside Conde Nast, River Road, Bruna Papandrea, and Webb.

Megan Phelps-Roper grew up as the granddaughter of Fred Phelps, who has been using the Westboro Baptist Church to espouse hate speech against LGBTQ individuals, Catholics, Muslims and other groups since the early 1990s. While Phelps-Roper spent most of her life following the same values as her family, her experience interacting with individuals over social media wound up having an immense impact on the way she looked at the world. She realized that she could no longer follow the church's teachings, and was ultimately disowned by her family.

While Reese Witherspoon originally got into the producer game back when she did Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde back in 2003, she has put a lot more focus into that part of her career in recent years. This really began with the duo of Wild and Gone Girl in 2014, but since then she has also produced the comedyHot Pursuit and the HBO series Big Little Lies. In addition to This Above All, she is also attached to make the upcoming Tinkerbell movie, Todd Haynes's untitled Peggy Lee project, and an adaptation of Liane Moriarty's novel Truly Madly Guilty.

As for Marc Webb, the director has been keeping busy recently - notably after taking a hiatus from the film world following The Amazing Spider-Man 2. This year he delivered both Gifted and The Only Living Boy In New York to theaters, and it seems that he's not ready to slow down any time soon. This will be his first time working with Nick Hornby, who is better known for his work as a novelest (About A Boy, High Fidelity), but does have some screenwriting experience under his belt courtesy of 2009's An Education and the previously-mentioned Wild with Reese Witherspoon.

This Above All doesn't have a release date yet, nor a scheduled start for production, so it's unclear at this time exactly when we can expect it to arrive. That being said, we'll be keeping a close eye on it, as it sounds like it could be an awards-contender in whatever year in which it winds up being released.

Marc Webb's career as a feature film director has been a consistent series of ups-and-downs. He arrived on the map thanks to the entertaining and lovable (500) Days of Summer; ran into some rough terrain under immense studio pressure with the Amazing Spider-Man blockbusters; and earlier this year reestablished his footing with the cute and earnestly dramatic Gifted. We'd love to say that he continues this upward trajectory with his newest movie, The Only Living Boy In New York, but lacking any of the fun that served to highlight the best elements of Webb's past work, it comes across as intensely pretentious and is almost entirely motivated by unlikable characters.

Based on an original screenplay by Allan Loeb, The Only Living Boy In New York centers on Thomas Webb (Callum Turner), a cynical and dejected wannabe writer who lives in contempt of his rich, Upper West Side parents (Pierce Brosnan, Cynthia Nixon) by slumming it in his Lower East Side apartment. When this 20-something isn't grousing about how New York has "lost its soul," or trying to un-friend zone himself with his crush, Mimi (Kiersey Clemons), he's recounting all of his problems with an alcoholic author (Jeff Bridges) who has just moved in to his building.

Things take a turn for the dramatic when a night on the town with Mimi leads Thomas to discover that his father (who he hates) has been having an affair with a woman named Johanna (Kate Beckinsale). Claiming to act in the name of protecting his emotionally fragile mother, the protagonist begins investigating this illicit relationship, but thanks to hormones and emotional issues, instead winds up sleeping with Johanna himself. Most of the film primarily hinges on the love triangle formed between Thomas, his dad and Johanna, but the despicableness of the characters mostly just makes you want them all to wind up miserable.

Above all, it's the characterization of Thomas -- specifically not Tom -- that ultimately makes the film a sincere challenge to enjoy. The protagonist is supposed to come across as a maturing, worldly young adult with shades of Holden Caulfield, but instead translates as an eye roll-worthy hipster who repeatedly and embarrassingly quips about how New York's most vibrant neighborhood is Philadelphia. You need to care about him in order to care about anything in the story, and it's a hurdle that the movie is never able to leap.

In contrast, Jeff Bridges is his usual, enjoyable Jeff Bridges self, though it's hardly a unique take on the drunk author trope, and he doesn't exactly do anything for most of the film beyond listen to his young neighbor's problems. In fact, because the entire narrative is driven by Thomas' perspective, almost every character is paper thin (Pierce Brosnan is your stereotypical cinematic disappointed father; Kate Beckinsale is sexual and secretive, etc.) and defined merely by their relationship with the protagonist -- with maybe a splash of voice over narration. It's a rather significant problem, as without real personalities audiences are persistently left wondering why Mimi or Johanna have any interest in him (in the case of the former, Thomas accuses her of being a pretty girl recruiting rejections in their first scene together, and I spent the rest of the movie wondering why she would ever want to see him again).

The Only Living Boy In New York does buy some of its credibility back with moderately well-installed narrative turns in the third act, but it doesn't wind up having the perspective changes necessary to make you reconsider everything that happens in the first two-thirds of the story. Without getting too far into spoilers, it's an ending that makes you reconsider everything that comes before it and look at pawns within the plot differently than you did initially -- but narrative growth doesn't satiate quite like character growth. You may look at the situation differently, but you still recognize Thomas as a pretentious prick, and without any emotional investment in what's happening to him none of it matters.

There are plenty of instances where I'll stand up for a movie about bad people doing bad things to other bad people, but those titles typically hinge on heroes and villains that can at least be called charismatic, in stories that provide real flavor. Marc Webb has demonstrated that he is much better than the work put forth in The Only Living Boy In New York, and hopefully next time around he'll have the opportunity to work with better material.

Marc Webb's two Amazing Spider-Man movies are always going to feel like unfinished business. When last we left his wall-crawler (played by Andrew Garfield), he was stepping past his grief at the loss of his true love and preparing to battle The Rhino (Paul Giamatti). But the seeds were being laid for a Sinister Six movie, which would team up a gaggle of great Spidey villains, and Webb now admits that the Six -- as well as a familiar Goblin -- would have filled the screen in his Amazing Spider-Man 3. The director confirms:

Marc Webb is busy promoting his new movie, The Only Living Boy in New York, but he stopped to speak with Den of Geek about his time behind the cameras on the Spider-Man universe that eventually led to Sony and Marvel pairing up on Spider-Man: Homecoming. In the conversation, Webb says that Chris Cooper's Norman Osborn was going to lead the Sinister Six -- which would have been introduced in a separate movie -- against Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield). And in deleted scenes from The Amazing Spider-Man 2, we would have seen Cooper's severed head being cryogenically frozen. How one comes back from having their head removed is beyond me, but, you know, comic-book science!

But it wasn't meant to be. The Amazing Spider-Man movies made some money, but not enough, and Sony eventually relented by agreeing to share the rights to the hero with Marvel. The studios collaborated on this summer's Spider-Man: Homecoming, weaving Peter Parker (Tom Holland) into the MCU and pitting him against The Vulture (Michael Keaton). And while the movie is well-received, it's making about the same amount as the Amazing Spider-Man movies. What does that tell us? No clue.

Spider-Man will next be seen fighting alongside the Avengers in 2018's Avengers: Infinity War. Then, Tom Holland will headline another solo adventure that's supposed to follow up the destruction of Infinity War. The Sinister Six, meanwhile, is nowhere to be found.

It's only been three years since Sony produced The Amazing Spider-Man 2, with Marc Webb on board as the director of the flick. However, in that time, Sony and Marvel have worked out a complicated deal allowing Spider-Man to appear in the MCU, in movies like the upcoming Spider-Man: Homecoming and Avengers: Infinity War. And while we never got the third movie in The Amazing Spider-Man franchise that Marc Webb was likely hoping for, he doesn't seem bitter about what went down. In fact, Spider-Man: Homecoming director Jon Watts recently revealed that Marc Webb reached out to him ahead of filming the latest Spider-Man venture. According to Watts,

So, it looks like Marc Webb got in touch with Jon Watts without stepping on too many toes. Although he reached out, it wasn't really to try and tell the newcomer director in the Marvel universe what to do. Instead, he simply told him that Spider-Man creator Stan Lee was a fount of information, which was practical advice, according to what Jon Watts told Den of Geek.

It's probably a good thing that Marc Webb left Jon Watts to pretty much do his own thing. Although Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 made plenty of money worldwide, the second movie did worse than the first, especially critically, and neither movie really dominated the box office in the U.S. With that in mind, bringing Spidey into the MCU fold was an intriguing choice, although Marvel's Kevin Feige had to talk Sony's Amy Pascal into the idea before she agreed to it.

Marc Webb has been open in the past about loving every moment of making his Spider-Man films, and while they may not have panned out into a third movie exactly as hoped, he still seems grateful for the experience. So much so, that he was willing to help out Jon Watts with a little advice early on in the process. He's also said he'd like to sit on a panel with Watts and Sam Raimi, who directed the well-known trilogy of Spider-Man films, ending with Spider-Man 3. We'll have to wait and see if that ever happens, but for now at least there's plenty more from Spider-Man to look forward to.

Spider-Man: Homecoming opens in theaters this weekend on July 7, 2017. To find out what other big releases are coming out while your kids are out of school and the weather is still hot, take a look at our summer movies schedule.

This week will see the release of a brand new Spider-Man solo movie set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe - and a big part of that is because the last webslinger film didn't work out so well. In face, Marc Webb's Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a total mess, and now it has its own Honest Trailer dedicated to it and brutally tearing it apart.

The first Amazing Spider-Man got a fairly moderate reaction when it rebooted the franchise back in 2012, but the can't really be said for the sequel that arrived in 2014. Amazing Spider-Man 2 was a sincere disappointment to fans hoping for more, and the folks over at Screen Junkies have really taken it down with their latest video.

The breakdown starts with unflattering comparisons to Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 and it all goes downhill from there, as the video skewers everything from the tired use of "Magic Blood" to its string of non-sensical plot threads that really don't go anywhere. It struggles in a major way courtesy of an overload of villains, as there are plenty of insults thrown around, but perhaps the best is the description of Paul Giamatti's Rhino appearances as "crap bread on a poop sandwich."

There are even plenty of issues that this video doesn't have time to get into. For example, it's incomprehensible why the The Amazing Spider-Man 2 feels the need to end on a happy note. The death of Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy really could have been emotionally devastating, but it is completely undercut by the fact that Peter Parker's mourning is covered in montage form. Even with all of the teases regarding plans for the Sinister Six, the finale still didn't manage to inspire much, if any, excitement for Amazing Spider-Man 3, so the whole thing wound up closing up shop.

Fortunately there is a happy ending to this story. As alluded to earlier, the disappointment of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was a key motivator in Sony Pictures striking a deal with Marvel Studios to allow Peter Parker to enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Last we we received an amazing taste of what it's like to have the wall-crawler in the franchise, but on Friday fans will finally get to see him in his own MCU-set adventure in Spider-Man: Homecoming. What's more, the new rebooted franchise can even now look back on the Amazing Spider-Man titles, figure out what went wrong and what people really didn't like, and avoid those mistakes with all future Spider-Man-related endeavors. It's a silver lining, people!

Given our anticipation level for the new Jon Watts-directed blockbuster, we plan to have a whole lot of Spider-Man content coming your way both this week and next week, so stay tuned for interviews, features, editorials, spoilers pieces, and a whole lot more here on CinemaBlend!

Director Marc Webb's Gifted is a film that is perpetually one major mistake from falling apart. Hinging on an adorable father-daughter-esque relationship, the film dances on the head of a pin as it constantly seems at risk of feeling cloying or emotionally manipulative. It is, however, the fact that it never winds up feeling this way that ultimately aids the movie tremendously as a whole, as it instead comes together as a beautiful small-scale drama with lovely characters and a legitimately engaging story to tell.

Based on an original screenplay by Tom Flynn, Gifted begins introducing audiences to Frank (Chris Evans) and his young niece, Mary (Mckenna Grace). While Frank is a man who enjoys the normal things in life, working as a freelance boat mechanic in Florida, Mary is actually something quite special... as the title implies. The daughter of Frank's sister, who was a mathematical genius, Mary is a tremendously intelligent young girl, and while she loves living with her devoted uncle, that situation finds itself under challenge.

Though he is a smart guy himself, Frank begins the movie realizing that Mary needs more than he can provide as a home school teacher -- and though his neighbor, Roberta (Octavia Spencer), strongly protests, he makes the decision to enroll her in public school. As you would imagine, it doesn't take long for Mary's teacher, Bonnie (Jenny Slate), to realize that she is much further along than her peers... but it's her suggestion of a more specialized education that causes things to start unraveling. Not only is the question posed asking whether or not Frank is a fit parent, but a serious custody battle ensues when his estranged, wealthy, strict mother, Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan) arrives claiming that she is the only one with the resources to raise Mary properly.

Following a three year break, Gifted is Marc Webb's first movie since the deeply flawed Amazing Spider-Man 2, and it's impressive what removing the shackles of the studio system can do for a filmmaker. The film is much more in-line with Webb's feature directorial debut, (500) Days of Summer, and its scale and atmosphere that the filmmaker operates well. Even beyond never letting the narrative feel sappy, saccharine or false, he demonstrates a talented ear for tone (as it's frequently as funny as it is effectively heart-wrenching), and doesn't shy away from the moral complications inherent in the feature's complex central conflict. Though there's never any real question who the audience is meant to be rooting for in the story, it's the rare drama that surprisingly makes you question whether or not the protagonist is actually doing the right thing in the pursuit of their goals.

Admittedly, an important swaying factor in this situation is the film's casting, as Marc Webb made the smart choice of hiring one of the industry's most likable stars as his lead. There are few actors who can pull off earnest quite as well as Chris Evans (he is Captain America, after all), and it's an incredibly important tool utilized in the movie -- as there's a part of you that just wants Mary to stay with Frank because his heart is so sincerely in the right place. It's a performance that genuinely enhances the entire movie, and paired with a stunning turn by the young, talented Mckenna Grace, it generates some beautiful emotional moments.

Gifted isn't a film that will be rearing its head once it comes time for awards season at the end of the year, but it's a sweet, charming bit of storytelling that has something to say and says it well. It creates that sparked magic that's generated when a smart director is paired with an effective script and talented performers, and makes for a satisfying cinematic experience.

In between the original Spider-Man film trilogy with Tobey Maguire, and the brand new Spider-Man that works with Marvel, there was another franchise that took a different take on the wall crawler. Ultimately the film's lack of success led to the new era with Marvel, but how does the director really feel about it all now? Marc Webb could be forgiven for being frustrated by the film's reception and might even have blame he'd like to place elsewhere. Instead, he prefers to look back positively on the films as he says he has no regrets about the movies or how they were made. According to the director...

Marc Webb's endorsement of the movies to Collider isn't 100% glowing. He does say he stands by them "in many ways" which would seem to suggest that there are some ways in which he doesn't. However, he also appears to absolve anybody else of blame by saying that the movies were very complicated and that he doesn't feel that he was a victim, so this wasn't a case of a movie being dictated to him by a studio or decisions being made without him. He's taking responsibility for the final product.

Marc Webb also goes beyond simply taking responsibility and also fully endorses the Amazing Spider-Man movies. While both movies, and the second one especially, were critically panned, Webb says that the second film has some very important themes in it which he's actually quite proud of having created.He says the movie was incredibly ambitious.

While it was the lack of success from Amazing Spider-Man 2 which ultimately led to Sony looking to strike a deal with Marvel, it doesn't appear that the director has regrets about the film's that he helped to bring to the world. Looking back, what do you think about the Amazing Spider-Man films now?

Three years after making The Amazing Spider-Man 2, director Marc Webb has a new film, Gifted, in theaters. Telling the story of a young man (Chris Evans) raising his brilliant young niece (Mckenna Grace), the film is very different in scale, genre and tone and tone from the filmmaker's last two projects... but it actually does have one thing in common. Spider-Man has spent decades grappling with the idea "with great power comes great responsibility," and also actually an important moral argument within the narrative of Gifted.

In the new movie, the young girl, Mary, finds herself torn between two guardians with very different philosophies. Her uncle, Frank, who has raised her since she was a baby, wants her to have a normal education and life, while her estranged grandmother, Evelyn, wants to foster her with private tutors and an exclusive upbringing. I brought up the idea of Spider-Man's mantra being applied to Gifted when I spoke with Marc Webb on the phone last week, and he not only agreed, but explained where both the power and responsibility rest within the film. Said Webb,

While Peter Parker is generally seen as old and mature enough to make his own decisions about vigilantism in Spider-Man comics and movies, the age of Mckenna Grace's character definitely puts a different spin on the situation. As Marc Webb points out, when she is old enough she should be able to make her own decisions about the directions she wants to go in life -- whether it be a career within academia or outside of it -- but she's not ready for that. Instead, all of her power rests in the hands of those who can properly teach her how to both use her genius and live a normal life, which in Gifted's case is her conflicting uncle and grandmother.

Taking the messages of Spider-Man and Gifted to the next level, Marc Webb went on to note that the conflicts that are explored in his new movie are very real. Clearly illustrating his research into the subject in the making of the film, Webb told me about the extreme consequences that can come as a result of a genius child being raised in the wrong environment:

Because every child and situation is different, Marc Webb continued noting that there are not cut and dry answers in the film, but affirmed that the big questions about power and responsibility are important. Said the director,

Gifted is now out in limited release, and for more from my interview with Marc Webb, check out the funny story he told me about his time having lunch with Stan Lee.

When we spoke with director Jon Watts last year on the set of Spider-Man: Homecoming, he mentioned that the best piece of advice he received from Amazing Spider-Man director Marc Webb was the instruction to schedule a lunch with Marvel Comics founder Stan Lee. Naturally, this made us curious about Webb's own experience with the comic book legend... I was actually lucky enough to learn about this meal when I recently had the opportunity to speak with Webb. Not only does he have an incredible amount of respect for Lee, but also got the funny answer as to why Peter Parker a.k.a. Spider-Man was written as an orphan. Webb told me,

Marc Webb's newest film, Gifted, is arriving in theaters on Friday, and I had the wonderful opportunity to talk with the director about the project earlier this week. It was at the very end of our chat that I brought up his advice to Jon Watts and his own lunch with Stan Lee -- and not only did I get a funny story out of it, but also some surprising insight into the mind of one of the greatest pop culture creatives in history.

When taken purely at face value, Stan Lee's comments may seem weirdly funny and dismissive, but it did legitimately spark a thought in Marc Webb's mind. What Lee was really driving at is just the importance of having a natural and organic foundation for character, because every plot he or she encounters is going to somehow evolve from it (and considering the thousands of Spider-Man stories out there, it clearly worked out rather well). Said Webb,

Obviously Marc Webb is not the only admirer of Stan Lee's. The man is credited for co-creating many of the greatest superhero characters of all time, many of whom have perpetuated consistently for nearly a century (and are arguably more popular now than ever before). It's not super hard to see why having the opportunity to sit down and pick his brain would be an amazing experience... which obviously goes a long way in explaining why it was the key piece of advice that Webb gave to Jon Watts.

As noted earlier, Marc Webb's latest feature, Gifted -- which stars Chris Evans, Jenny Slate and Octavia Spencer -- is being given a limited released this Friday, out in select markets courtesy of Fox Searchlight. You can find theaters playing the film on the official website, and stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more from my interview with the director.

Directors are like fingerprints; no two are completely alike. Whenever a filmmaker takes the reins on a superhero film, you can almost always guarantee that they will leave their own unique mark on that universe. In fact, from Christopher Nolan to James Gunn, some directors seem tailor-made to work with certain superheroes. That being said, time and time again we have seen franchises run into trouble whenever they swap directors midstream. For all of the filmmakers who have improved franchises by signing on to sequels (the Russos Brothers come to mind) there are plenty of others who have driven other series into the ground.

With that in mind, Deadpool 2's director, Tim Miller, recently dropped out of the highly anticipated project, and 20th Century Fox has started to look for his replacement. This has us incredibly worried. We've compiled a list of replacement directors who botched their shots at superhero franchises. Take a look at our entries and let us know what you think. Now let's get the ball rolling with one of the most famous fumbles in superhero movie history...

Batman Forever/Batman & Robin - Joel Schumacher

It's hard to argue against the importance of Tim Burton's Batman movies. Even if certain elements seem dated, the fact remains that the legendary filmmaker completely captured the gothic spirit of The Caped Crusader's city, mission, and overall aesthetic. However, that went down the drain when the franchise brought Joel Schumacher on board. Instead of dark, rich storytelling, Schumacher went full camp and embraced an interpretation of the Batman mythos that felt more interested in selling toys and marketing to kids than getting the universe right. Deadpool will unquestionably be a more popular character by the time Deadpool 2 hits theaters, but the upcoming sequel cannot forget the tone, spirit and overall style that made the first film so beloved. Play to the fans, not the masses.

X-Men: The Last Stand - Brett Ratner

Bryan Singer pretty much started the modern age of superhero movies when he painstakingly directed X-Men and X2: X-Men United. He brought a sense of passion and nerdy enthusiasm to the material that has really become the standard for comic book movies as the years have gone by. That all changed in 2006 when Brett Ratner took the reins for X-Men: The Last Stand. Compared to Singer, Ratner clearly felt much less reverence for the Dark Phoenix source material, and it showed through his shallow handling of the characters. The entire X-Men universe would subsequently remain on shaky ground for almost a decade until Bryan Singer returned for X-Men: Days of Future Past. The folks behind Deadpool 2 must heed this example, because it perfectly encapsulates one of the first rules of comic book adaptations: get someone who knows, loves, and respects the source material.

Thor: The Dark World - Alan Taylor

When Kenneth Branagh directed the first installment in the Thor series, he brought an incredibly distinct Shakespearean sensibility and off-kilter visual style to the table. It was an astonishing feat for such an obscure character, and Thor proved to be the most theatrical Phase 1 Marvel film. Sadly, when Game of Thrones alum, Alan Taylor, took over for Thor: The Dark World, all of that went out the window. Lacking a truly distinctive personal style, Taylor more or less hobbled The Dark World together using lessons clearly picked up from his time on the HBO fantasy series, as well as ample input from Marvel Studios. The resulting product was the blandest Marvel movie to date. Deadpool 2 cannot make this mistake, whoever fills in for Tim Miller needs to share the daring and risky attitude that Miller brought to Wade Wilson's original movie. To play it safe would be to miss the point of Deadpool entirely.

The Amazing Spider-Man - Marc Webb

When Marc Webb took the Spider-Man franchise off of Sam Raimi's hands for The Amazing Spider-Man series in 2012, there was quite a bit of excitement around what the director could do. Not known for blockbuster material (let alone a superhero movie), Webb's most notable credit came in the form of (500) Days of Summer. Sadly, Summer turned out to be the perfect indicator for what to expect from the film, as The Amazing Spider-Man films only really worked during Peter Parker and Gwen Stacey's romantic scenes -- helped in large part by the chemistry between Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone. Despite being a competent filmmaker, Webb proved almost immediately that he was a cursory fan of the source material by comparison to his predecessor. With Deadpool 2 on the horizon, 20th Century Fox needs to make sure they bring someone on board who can capture the style necessary for a Deadpool movie, and who also has an intimate knowledge of the comics -- not just someone who can rehash the Deadpool greatest hits.

Superman III - Richard Lester

There's a strong case to be made that Richard Donner's Superman films are the most important superhero movies of all time. They treated the source material with love, and proved that men in capes could have mainstream appeal. That being said, the legacy of the Donner-era Superman films was almost immediately tarnished when the franchise was handed to Richard Lester for Superman III. Primarily known for comedies, Lester's influence on the film led to some of the most jarring tonal shifts ever seen in a superhero franchise, often relying on slapstick humor and the unbearable presence of Richard Pryor's Gus Gorman to generate "laughs." Even Superman actor, Christopher Reeve, vocally spoke out against Lester's influence on the franchise after the film's release, citing that the filmmaker was "always looking for a gag." Deadpool is obviously quite different than Superman, but that doesn't change the fact that Tim Miller established a certain tone and style that worked for this universe. That needs to be respected by whoever takes over.

Although the Spider-Man deal between Sony and Marvel was a nerdy blessing to comic book fans, it did mean that Sony had to abandon their earlier plans for the wall-crawler. Bringing the superhero into the Marvel Cinematic Universe meant scrapping their never-realized Spider-Man cinematic universe. Chief among the losses was The Amazing Spider-Man 3, which would have been the conclusion of director Marc Webb’s Spider-Man trilogy. Fortunately, Webb doesn’t have any hard feelings about not getting the chance to finish his story.

Webb has previously gone on record saying that he’s happy Spider-Man is part of the MCU, and he recently told Slashfilm that he doesn’t have any bittersweet feelings about only getting to tell a two-part story. Said the director,

The Amazing Spider-Man series was the second attempt at telling Spider-Man’s story on the big screen, following Sam Raimi’s trilogy from 2002 to 2007. While Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 provided a satisfying conclusion to Tobey Maguire’s version of the web-slinger, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 left a big plot thread dangling by hinting at the formation of the Sinister Six. The plan was to eventually release a spinoff starring the super villain team in 2016, with The Amazing Spider-Man 3 following in 2018. There were also movies in development starring Venom and a female hero, respectively. Evidently, Sony is still interested in making these spinoffs (which would now take place in the MCU), but since they’ve been indefinitely delayed, whether they’ll actually ever be made is a mystery.

As for The Amazing Spider-Man 3, it was rumored several months back that one of the ideas being kicked around was Peter obtaining a formula that would allow him to bring his loved ones back from the dead. Yeah, that sounds pretty kooky. Again, that plot idea was never official, but according to Andrew Garfield, at minimum the audience would have seen Peter Parker still coming to terms with the death of Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy.

The Amazing Spider-Man series is dead, but Sony’s partnership with Marvel heralds a new beginning for the everyone’s favorite neighborhood superhero. Tom Holland will make his debut as the MCU’s Peter Parker in Captain America: Civil War on May 6, 2016, and he’ll star in Jon Watts’ new Spider-Man solo film on July 27, 2017.

Chris Evans is rather accustomed to surrounding himself with an array of stunning actors. Not only did he do just that with The Avengers and Avengers: Age Of Ultron, he also just finished performing alongside an even stronger superhero line-up while filming Captain America: Civil War. But the cast for his next project, Gifted, might just top the lot.

According to Deadline, Gifted will be directed by Marc Webb, who most recently tried his hand at rebooting the Spider-Man franchise with The Amazing Spider-Man 1 and 2, but excelled with 500 Days Of Summer. Written by Tom Flynn, and produced by Fox Searchlight, Gifted sounds as if it will be an emotional and uplifting drama, which will have Chris Evans at its fore trying to prove that he’s more than just a shield.

In Gifted, Chris Evans will play Frank Adler, who is a deliberate underachiever who also has been tasked with helping to raise his niece, Mary, in rural Florida, with his mother, Eveyln. Frank just wants Mary to live a normal life, but after she’s told that she’s "gifted" by her teachers, her grandmother insists that she should be pushed as hard as possible. This is when Frank intervenes, and takes legal action to become her legal guardian.

This will mark the latest turn of pace for Chris Evans, who recently just released his directorial debut, Before We Go, which came in the midst of his numerous performances as Steve Rogers.

Taking the role of Mary is Mckenna Grace, who was discovered after an extensive search. The 9-year-old actress belies her age with her rather astounding resume. In fact, in the next 18 months, she has five films coming out, the biggest of which is Roand Emmerich's Independence Day: Resurgence.

Gifted will need a lot from Grace, as reports suggest that she will appear in most scenes, and these will clearly involve plenty of emotion as she finds herself in the midst of a custody battle.

Lindsay Duncan, who most recently excelled in Birdman but has also lit up the likes of Doctor Who and has a glittering stage career, will play the role of Frank’s mother, Evelyn. She is clearly overprotective of Mary, especially since her own daughter committed suicide, which leaves them in this predicament.

Evelyn has legal guardianship of Mary, and Frank is so adamant that Mary be raised in as normal a fashion as possible that he then takes his own mother to court.

Rounding off the impressive cast is Oscar winning actress Octavia Spencer (The Help), who will play Roberta Taylor. The landlord to Frank’s apartment, as well as a good friend of Mary’s, Spencer is likely to be a sounding board to the number of issues that are circulating throughout Gifted.

There’s no announcement on when Gifted will begin production or be released. But since it has awards-season contender written all over it, I can only assume that the plan will be to try and get it out in time for either next year’s ceremonies, or the year after.

I am part of a select group of comic-book movie fans. I liked Marc Webb’s two Spider-Man movies (gasp!), and was interested in finding out where the storyline was heading. I thought Chris Cooper was primed to create an iconic Norman Osborn, and I thought the OsCorp storyline would have fed beautifully into Kraven the Hunter as a villain in The Amazing Spider-Man 3. Alas, it’s not to be, but Andrew Garfield hinted at some of their process in a recent interview, hinting at what might have been.

Garfield is busy promoting his upcoming drama 99 Homes, but of course has to address a number of Spider-Man questions with the press. (That’s what happens when you used to be Peter Parker, if even for a little while.) When asked by Uproxx about the doomed The Amazing Spider-Man 3, Garfield explained that Peter’s emotional state following the death of Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) was going to directly color part three, stating:

The end of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was a bit of a rushed affair. Peter was in mourning, having just lost the love of his life. However, in case you forgot, Aunt May (Sally Field) convinced her nephew, Peter (Andrew Garfield), to resume his heroic duties as the Rhino (Paul Giamatti) terrorized Manhattan. While this is somewhat a case of revisionist history, I did believe that allowing Peter to shed his grief and baggage over Gwen and slip back into the Spider-Man costume was too quick, and the sequel could have (should have) ended on a darker, more open-ended tone if New York City had to wonder if the world was done with Spider-Man… or if Spider-Man was done with the world? Then he could have resumed his responsibilities in the third chapter, leaving audiences guessing for a little bit of time.   

As Andrew Garfield notes, none of this was meant to be, and Marvel will now preside over the next Spider-Man movie, with Tom Holland in the role. I would love to have notes from Marc Webb about what he wanted in The Amazing Spider-Man 3, but for now, it will remain an unfinished story… one of many in Hollywood’s rocky history.   

After Marvel and Sony announced in February that they would be working together on future Spider-Man films, this understandably spelled the end of the Amazing Spider-Man series. Although Sony originally planned to build a self-contained Spider-Man universe, these were tossed aside in favor of throwing the Wall-Crawler in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Despite the creative shift, previous Spidey director Marc Webb doesn’t have any hard feelings about how things went.

When asked by MTV how he felt about Marvel taking Spider-Man in a new direction, Webb stated that he’s glad to see the character back home with Marvel. In his words:

Webb went on to say that the Spider-Man universe has a lot of capacity for reinvention, and no matter what version of the story is being told, Spidey is a character that belongs in the movies. Since the Marvel/Sony announcement, Tom Holland has been cast as the new Peter Parker and Jon Watts has been hired as director of the next solo film. Marisa Tomei has also been reportedly recruited as Peter’s Aunt May.

Despite looking forward to what’s coming next for the Wall-Crawler, Webb admits that he wish he had been able to expand on his story following The Amazing Spider-Man 2, specifically with learning more about Michael Massee’s The Man in the Hat (the mysterious individual who was forming the Sinister Six) and introducing Venom. The Amazing Spider-Man 3 was set to hit theaters in 2018, and would have been accompanied by Sinister Six (which is still in development) and a female-led spinoff. While plot details on the upcoming films were scarce, Denis Leary, who played George Stacy, said at Comic-Con this weekend that one of the ideas for The Amazing Spider-Man 3 involved Peter using a formula that would have let him bring his deceased loved ones back to life.

You can check out Webb’s full comments in the clip below, including Webb talking about his past experience with Watts.

The Amazing Spider-Man series is now nothing more than another entry in Spider-Man’s decades-long history, but we’ll be seeing plenty of the Web-Slinger in the coming years. Holland’s Spider-Man will debut next May in Captain America: Civil War, followed by his solo movie on July 28, 2017.

The recent hack of Sony’s email system revealed far more about the studio’s Spider-Man problems than they probably cared to share. Among the many rumors that became headline news was the fact that Andrew Garfield’s role in the series could be in jeopardy, and Sam Raimi potentially was approached to help resuscitate the franchise. But news on the wall-crawler also surfaces the old fashioned way nowadays – meaning, someone with insider information speaks up in an interview, and that’s where we get today’s nugget of Spidey news.

Brian Michael Bendis is a comic book author and artist whose credits over the years have included work on Ultimate Spider-Man, which many view as an influencer on Marc Webb’s run of Spider-Man movies. He’s promoting multiple projects these days, and spoke with Yahoo Movies about his early comic, Fortune and Glory, and his odd adventures in the film industry. When the chat came around to Spider-Man, Bendis had an incredibly revealing story to share about a meeting he took with Sony prior to Webb’s first film, The Amazing Spider-Man.

The way he remembers it, Bendis was called into the office of Sony chair Amy Pascal, and asked – in front of a large group of producers – if Spider-Man’s webshooters should be organic (like in the Raimi films) or mechanical (like in the comic books). Being as how Brian Michael Bendis is a legit Spidey expert, he told them, "Mechanical." What happens next makes us laugh, with sorrow. He said:

You DID, Brian Michael Bendis. You did. As a staunch defender of Webb’s Spidey films, I loved that they used mechanical webshooters over Sam Raimi’s bizarre creative choice to have the webs manifest out of Peter Parker’s wrists. Why would you choose to do that?

Now, let’s dive into why this story is so disturbing. Sony actually had to have a meeting to see if mechanical webshooters was the right way to go? They had to call in an expert to break a tie? When there are decades of previous Spider-Man stories to peruse that would spell out everything that you need to know about the wall-crawling hero? This is yet another story illustrating the fact that Sony doesn’t know what to do with this character. And that’s a damn shame. I haven’t been one to jump on the "Give Spidey to Marvel" bandwagon, because I believe the character, his Rogue’s Gallery, and his stories are strong enough to carry a wealth of standalone movies. But when I hear stories like this, I begin to sway toward the growing tide of people who want to see Spider-Man in the MCU, and out of Sony’s hands.

Critics of Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-man 2 complain that the sequel was overstuffed, with characters who didn’t get proper treatment because they had to be shuffled along to serve a larger mythology – the OsCorp narrative. Electro (Jamie Foxx) and Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) often are cited as significant characters who were shortchanged by the sequel’s pacing. I, however, wanted to know more – a LOT more – about Ravencroft’s mad scientist, Dr. Kafka, who appeared to have a significant role until most of his footage ended up on the cutting room floor. And the actor who played him is annoyed by this.

While attending the Toronto International Film Festival, I interviewed Marton Csokas, the actor who played Dr. Kafka in Marc Webb’s second Spider-Man film. The demented doctor, as you may recall, had two noteworthy scenes in the movie – one where he interrogates Foxx’s Electro; and one where he dies. Kind of anticlimactically. He looked like this in the film:

When I asked Csokas if he was happy with the way his portrayal of Dr. Kafka turned out, he happily admitted that he hasn’t seen the film, and likely never will.

I always find it fascinating when an actor admits that they haven’t seen a film that they worked on. Johnny Depp is one of those performers who notoriously claims to have never seen a film that he acts in (at least, from start to finish). What, then, is the point? Film is such a visual medium. You pour your heart and soul into a feature. Don’t you want to see how it turns out?

In Marton Csokas’ case, I guess I can understand if all of the work that he put into The Amazing Spider-Man 2 didn’t pan out. Negative reviews of Marc Webb’s sequel claim that the movie feels like it was butchered in post-production by a studio that had different goals than the filmmaker and his cast. Even Andrew Garfield recently came out and blamed the studio for the erratic nature of the finished film. And when Csokas and I continued to discuss what was supposed to happen with his character, he teased a LOT of footage that hit the cutting-room floor.

There once was a petition started by fans to see the Director’s Cut of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. And now, the more that we learn about the film after the fact, the more I’m convinced that what Marc Webb, Andrew Garfield and the main players behind the sequel started to film isn’t what we were able to see. Marton Csokas, Campbell Scott, the actress hired to play Jamie Foxx’s mom… they all fell victim to the editing knife. We can only wonder what might have been, and hope the errors are corrected before The Amazing Spider-Man 3.

It would seem that there is a very bright future in store for the Spider-Man villain known as Kraven The Hunter. First graphics from the end credits of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 hint that the character will end up being one of the main villains that the web-slinger will have to face in the upcoming Sinister Six movie, and now director Marc Webb is strongly hinting at his desire to use the character in an upcoming movie.

Comic Book Movie recently had the chance to speak with Webb, and when asked about which unused Spider-Man villains the director was interested in exploring in the future, the filmmaker's answer focused primarily on expert hunter. Said the director,

With the exception of Scorpion, all of the villains that Webb mentioned were teased at the end of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but it's still hard to predict exactly what's in store for the future of Sony's Spider-Man Cinematic Universe. If the director wants to use any of these characters, it will have to be in The Amazing Spider-Man 3, as he is not currently attached to helm The Amazing Spider-Man 4 and directing duties for The Sinister Six and Venom are going to Drew Goddard and Alex Kurtzman, respectively. So is this Webb's way of hinting at Kraven the Hunter being the central antagonist of the next Spider-Amazing Man movie?

In the comics, Kraven the Hunter (a.k.a. Sergei Kravinoff) is the world's greatest big game hunter. He enter's Spider-Man's life because Kraven believes that capturing and killing the wall-crawler would cement his place in history. He doesn't use weapons, but has superhuman strength, agility and senses that allow him to take down any prey with just his bare hands. He was one of the founding members of the Sinister Six along with Doctor Octopus, Vulture, Electro, Mysterio, and Sandman.

The question of how Kraven could be introduced into the Amazing Spider-Man universe is an interesting question. The franchise heavily borrows from the Ultimate Spider-Man comics, which adapted Kraven as an Australian reality TV show host who calls out Spider-Man in an attempt to boost his ratings. After Spidey makes a fool of him and his show is cancelled, Kraven decides to get a genetic upgrade, which leads to all kinds of nastiness. Could this be the direction the franchise is heading?

Would you like to see Kraven The Hunter introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man 3? If not, who would you want to see? Let us know what you think in the comments section below!

Marc Webb understands Spider-Man. He gets the little things that made the character work on the pages of comic books for generations. And he has figured out how to bring those qualities to life on screen in both 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man and that movie’s energetic sequel, The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Webb accomplishes so much on screen in this weeks’ blockbuster release. Not only does he build on the vital relationship between more-confident Peter Parker and his soul mate, Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone). Webb also plants the seed for a growing Amazing Spider-Man universe that is expected to include the super-villain all-star squad The Sinister Six and the alien symbiote known as Venom.

But we’re not there yet. We’re still celebrating the incredible accomplishment Webb achieved with The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which is part of the reason why Sony invited me and my 10-year-old son, P.J., to New York City for the domestic press day on the studio’s film. Webb has been nice enough to entertain my wild theories about the possible future of the Spider-Man franchise. What a thrill it was to now see him facing the tough questions of my young Spidey fan. (Our conversation with Jamie Foxx and Dane DeHaan can be found here.)

Initially, they spoke about Webb’s vision for the character, and the changes he had to make during pre- and post-production:

Then P.J. was fascinated with the amount of footage Marc Webb was able to film on the actual streets of Manhattan. This was my son’s first trip to the Big Apple, and we screened the movie in Times Square. After the film, the two of us walked to several of the locations that were showcased in the movie, notably the Times Square confrontation between Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) and Electro (Jamie Foxx). When P.J. asked him about filming locations, Marc Webb told him:

I couldn’t help but pick up on a very deliberate nod to time in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, especially Peter Parker’s inability to stop it at very specific – borderline tragic – moments in the story. Marc Webb’s reasoning for that creative decision was fascinating. (OK, this one is a little detailed, and yes, can be considered spoilery, so proceed with caution!)

We went out of our way to avoid talking about deep The Amazing Spider-Man 2 spoilers in these TV conversations. But Webb did get on the phone with me after the fact and we talked at length about the growing Spider-Man universe, and the roles key figures will play moving forward. I’ll bring that content to the site as the movie opens, so more of you will be able to see the movie and read content freely, without the fear of being spoiled. For now, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 opens in theaters on May 2, Go see it, Spider-Man fans!

From cryptic set photos posted on Twitter during production to announced plans for both future Sinister Six and Venom spin-offs, we have been caught in the mysterious web of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 for months and months now, but soon enough we will finally be getting all of the answers to our most dying questions.

But while the countdown still sits at 43 days until the film arrives in theaters nationwide, earlier this week I had the pleasure of getting a very special early look at the new blockbuster. Along with a cadre of other film journalists, I was invited to enter the Sony Pictures Studio Lot in the Culver City area of Los Angeles where I not only got to watch five full scenes from the film – totaling a little over of 30 minutes of footage total – but also participate in a question and answer session with Marc Webb. With the director we talked not only about the new Amazing Spider-Man sequel and it's various characters, but also what lies beyond.

Read on to discover the five coolest things we learned from the footage and the filmmaker!

1) Top comedians were brought in to boost the humor

Spider-Man is perhaps best known for shooting webs, climbing up walls and swinging between the skyscrapers of New York, but from a personality stand-point the character has always been a funny guy. Peter Parker is a kid who (for the most part) loves being a superhero, and part of that process for him is constantly throwing out one-liners and witticisms that drive his enemies completely bonkers. Marc Webb’s first Amazing Spider-Man did its part to bring back the funny to the character, working in scenes like Spidey’s altercation with a car thief, but for the sequel the director decided to take the humor to another level.

Discussing the idea of making Spider-Man even funnier than he was in the last film and really hitting on all of the iconic notes of the character, Webb revealed during the Q&A session that the production actually brought in a roundtable of comedians to help punch up Peter Parker’s dialogue, with star Andrew Garfield then testing the lines to make sure the lines fit with the portrayal. Said Webb,

While I can’t say what the screenplay looked like before the punch-ups, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 footage that we saw did feature a good handful of funny Spidey wisecracks, the funniest coming in one of the early scenes in the movie when the hero is having a bit of a tête-à-tête with Aleksei Sytsevich a.k.a. Rhino (Paul Giamatti) and walks away humming the Spider-Man theme song.

2) There’s a bit of a Blues Brothers influence

Following a flashback sequence that explains a bit more about what happened to Peter Parker’s parents and their fateful plane trip, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 opens with an incredibly energetic action sequence that has Spider-Man swinging through the streets in pursuit of a giant truck hauling dangerous chemicals (driven by Rhino) that is hurtling through the streets of Manhattan. In addition to having a number of laugh-out-loud lines, the scene is packed with spectacle as well, as Spider-Man is joined in his chase by what looks like 100 cop cars. During the Q&A, one of my colleagues noted that the plethora of police was actually very reminiscent of the 1980 John Landis comedy The Blues Brothers. Funny enough, this same thought had occurred to the production team during the making of the movie.

"We came on set to know it as the Blues Brothers sequence," Webb said laughing, referencing a scene where all of the cop cars end up piling on top of one another. "I wanted to start off the movie in a more playful way, especially given the opening situation with the plane, because I wanted to bring it back into this playful part of Spider-Man that also felt big and action driven."

Basically, you’re hopefully going to be laughing a lot during The Amazing Spider-Man 2 just listening to funny dialogue, but the blockbuster action sequences are certainly there to put a big wide smile on your face as well.

3) Electro’s motivation

Jamie Foxx’s Max Dillon a.k.a. Electro was a key figure in almost every sequence on display during the footage presentation, and does an interesting job establishing the character’s personality. Above all, what the character seems to be desperate for is to be needed. During the aforementioned Rhino chase scene, Max runs into Spider-Man and is absolutely elated when the hero tells him that he needs his help (even if it is really just an off-hand remark). This resurfaces in a big way during a huge Times Square action sequence when the character - now all blue and sparkly - is elated to see himself on all of the bright digital billboards, and it’s taken to another level later when Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) comes to him begging for help in a desperate situation.

Being intrigued by this, I asked Webb about what we can expect from the comic book villain in terms of his emotional state and what drives him to the evil that he ends up committing. The director explained that when presented with the character, he and writers Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman saw a guy that was both empathetic and a bit crazy. Said Webb,

Digging further, I asked the director if we would actually get to see the inciting incident that made him the person he is. Playing coy, Webb put on a wry smile and simply said, "Sure."

4) We will meet the guy from the end credits of The Amazing Spider-Man

The first Amazing Spider-Man movie ended with one of the most enigmatic post-credits sequences we’ve seen yet in modern comic book movies. The scene began in a prison cell with Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), and after a flash of lightning we see that he is no longer alone, but instead with a mysterious man hiding in the shadows. The guest asks the incarcerated scientist if Peter Parker knows the truth about his parents, and after Connors says no the mystery man disappears in another lightning flash. Fans have spent the last two years speculating about the identity of the "Man in the Shadows," and now we have a promise that answers are on the way.

The director didn’t really elaborate on the situation, but during the Q&A it was confirmed that by the time The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is over we will know exactly who that guy was. While most original theories from when movie came out suggested that the character was either Electro or Norman Osborn, those two are seemingly now off the table given that the former is being played by Jamie Foxx and the latter by Chris Cooper. Not wanting to give too much away, Webb explained that some things are just best left for the big screen.

"We have to be very careful about what we reveal and we get a lot of flak for sometimes talking about too many things," he said. "But we also enthuse people to see the movie, and so in keeping with trying to make that cinematic experience for everybody at home really special, I’m going to withhold that answer from you."

5) Working towards a larger Spider-Man universe

Much like how Warner Bros. has started making a larger DC Comics world on the big screen and the folks over at 20th Century Fox are busy trying to find a way to bring the X-Men and Fantastic Four together, the extreme success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has inspired the people behind the Amazing Spider-Man franchise to think bigger. As a result, in the next few years will see the release of not just an Amazing Spider-Man 3, but also Sinister Six and Venom titles. It has already been made very clear that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will be doing quite a bit of world-building to get the franchise to where it needs to be, and that was a subject that Webb expounded on during the Q&A.

The director explained that while the Amazing Spider-Man movies were originally planned as a simple trilogy, the project began to grow in size as they started to play around with bigger ideas. Eventually they had so many ideas that they realized it couldn’t all fit in the second movie, so part of Amazing Spider-Man 2’s job became setting up storylines for future development.

It has already been confirmed that Webb won’t be returning to direct The Amazing Spider-Man 4 and that Sinister Six and Venom are likely going to be helmed by Drew Goddard and Alex Kurtzman, respectively, but the filmmaker has definitely made a more than significant contribution to the future of the franchise:

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 arrives in theaters on May 2nd.

When you think about it, it's pretty rare for the same director to helm a full trilogy of modern superhero movies. Tim Burton only made two Batmans, Jon Favreau only made two Iron Mans, and Bryan Singer only made two X-Men - not to mention the incredibly long list of filmmakers who only got a shot to direct one film in a trilogy. There are some exceptions to this of course, two being Sam Raimi (Spider-Man) and Christopher Nolan (Batman), but today we learn that list is about to become one name longer. Variety is reporting that Marc Webb, director of The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, has made a deal with Sony to come back and direct The Amazing Spider-Man 3 for its June 2016 release date.

Of course, The Amazing Spider-Man 3 is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Sony's future plans for the wall crawling webslinger. In addition to having the hero getting three movies of his own, the studio is also developing a Sinister Six movie with Cabin in the Woods' Drew Goddard attached to write and possibly direct, and Alex Kurtzman is attached to make a film based around the fan favorite villain/anti-hero Venom. While those projects are definitely in development, neither one has secured a release date yet, so we don't know which one will be coming out first. That said, Sony's vision is very clear. As said by SPE Co-Chairman Amy Pascal, "We are expanding the Spider-Man universe into The Sinister Six and Venom, so that we have Spider-Man movies every year."

With his first Spider-Man movie Marc Webb earned a bit of a mixed reaction. He was unfortunately saddled with the responsibility of rebooting the entire franchise despite the fact that Raimi's films only came out a decade before, but he wound up doing a pretty decent job with the material and introduced a new and exciting version of the titular character.

The real test for Webb comes this May with the release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. One of the best things about watching this franchise develop has been seeing the director's detailed plan for a giant Spider-Man cinematic universe unfold, and some huge steps are expected to be taken in the first sequel. The filmmaker certainly has a lot on his plate, with Jamie Foxx's Electro, Dane DeHaan's Green Goblin and Paul Giamatti's Rhino all entering the fray, but the results have a very good chance of being really cool.

The Amazing Spider-Man 3 is expected to go into production this fall.

Villains like Electro, as played by Jamie Foxx, and The Rhino, portrayed by Paul Giamatti, have been all over the marketing for Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but one character who remains a complete and total mystery is the nefarious Norman Osborn - who will be played by Chris Cooper. As we learned in last year's blockbuster superhero film, the new series of Spider-Man movies begins with the Oscorp founder suffering from a debilitating disease that scientists are working around the clock to cure, and as a result the character has been kept in the shadows. Still, we expect the character to have an explosive presence when he finally does appear, and judging from some recent comments made by Cooper we won't be disappointed.

Currently out promoting his new film August: Osage County, the Academy Award winner recently did an interview with MTV and during the course of the conversation the actor revealed that the new version of the Norman Osborn character will be unlike what we've seen previously. Asked if the movie would have Norman turning into his famous Green Goblin alter-ego in the upcoming sequel, Cooper sidestepped the question saying, "[Amazing] Spider-Man 2 was an introduction to Norman, and — you'll see — an extremely odd introduction, which apparently will lead to something more." Is having a character be introduced while sickly and on a hospital bed considered "extremely odd," or is there something coming that we can't even begin to theorize about yet?

The idea of "leading to something more" will also once again have fans salivating over the idea of a Spider-Man vs. the Sinister Six movie - something that's been rumored and talked about for months now. MTV took the opportunity to ask if the actor has heard about the supervillain team, and while Cooper says that he has received some material about the group and knows about them vaguely, they won't be part of the plans for The Amazing Spider-Man 2. "They said also that this Spider-Man is its own Spider-Man," Cooper said. "We're just kind of starting from the beginning."

Unlike both Foxx and Giamatti, Cooper has a unique challenge in the new superhero movie, as he is playing a character that was featured very prominently in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films. While there is still a good deal of dispute about the look of the Green Goblin's costume in Raimi's version, what can't be denied is how good Willem Dafoe was in the role:

Will Cooper and Webb's new take on the character stand up? Are you excited to see how it turns out? Hit the comments below to tell us what you think.

In the world of music composers, we tend to make note of the select few elite masters of the trade. John Williams returning to the Star Wars franchise? Hell yeah. Michael Giacchino scoring Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland? We’ll take it. But Hans Zimmer’s recently announced collaboration with Pharrell Williams for the score of Marc Webb’s highly anticipated The Amazing Spider-Man 2 had us a little quizzical. And now we’re completely taken aback as a musical "supergroup" has formed for this film, according to a press release, comprised of The Smiths’ legendary non-Morrissey songwriter Johnny Marr, producer and Eurythmics musician Dave Stewart, and Incubus guitarist Mike Einziger. So, does this sound like a great idea for a movie score, or a mess as chaotic as the Sgt. Pepper album cover?

The news was announced by Sony Pictures’ Worldwide Music president Lia Vollack, who said "this kind of collaboration is only possible because of who Marc Webb is – not only director but also a musician – combined with who Hans is and what Spider-Man means to so many people. Nobody has ever approached film music in this way before and this likely can never be replicated."

Those are pretty dramatic words, considering I’m not sure how many filmmakers want such a hodgepodge of musicians, regardless of their individual talent, responsible for the bulk of their films’ emotional impact. Granted, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will probably still follow Zimmer’s disappointingly generic streak as of late, as heard in films such as The Lone Ranger and Man of Steel. But at least he’s happy about it.

"Marc and I were talking about Spider-Man," Zimmer said in the statement, "and as the word got out, so many of our friends and musicians started calling us up, wanting to be a part of it, because they love Spider-Man…With all of these hugely talented people wanting to join us, it was Marc who said, ‘Why not start a band?’ Marc and I have had a great start jamming with everybody, and we still have a few surprises up our sleeve."

Williams’ previous work in film scoring with Zimmer was mostly limited to orchestral drum work, though he did do a bit for Despicable Me and its sequel. Einziger, who has been battling carpal tunnel in recent years, scored the Goetz brothers thriller Scenic Route, while Stewart most recently did the music for the celeb-meet series <="" the="">. And Marr previously worked his guitar magic with Zimmer on the score for Christopher Nolan’s Inception.

I can’t imagine these guys all working as a "band" together, and expect for some disparate visions to form the bulk of these ideas. Maybe I’m just being the cynical guy here thinking that all these near-legendary guys should be coming together for something a little more reputable than The Amazing Spider-Man 2. But if nothing else, it’ll be a more interesting sound than Zimmer’s work on The Dark Knight Rises.

Catch The Amazing Spider-Man 2 when it hits theaters on May 2, 2014.

This either could be a blessing, or a curse.

Sony has hired the writing team behind next summer’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 to stay on the proverbial clock and bang out a script for the already-announced Amazing Spider-Man 3, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Jeff Pinkner, Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci will continue the work they started on Marc Webb’s sequel, bringing closure to an arc we believe will complete a trilogy of new Spider-Man movies, while setting the stage for a fourth film that might, if what we’re hearing actually happens, lead to a Sinister Six movie.

Let’s start with the various reasons why this is good new for Webb’s Spider-Man franchise. Continuity and stability are key elements to any successful franchise. It’s difficult to maintain storytelling momentum when the creative pieces are being interchanged by a studio that’s trying to plug holes. THR says that “the hope is that [Webb] will return” to direct the third Spider-Man movie, so having his screenwriters back in place can only help him build on what we’re going to see on screen next May. Webb seems to get along with these guys. They no doubt have been structuring out a long-term plan for Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker, and I have complete confidence they know exactly where they’d like their story to continue – and possibly conclude – so Sony handing the ball to the screenwriting team keeps the franchise on track instead of knocking it backward a few pegs right as pre-production should be ramping up.

So why might this be a curse? Because, if we’re being honest, Kurtzman and Orci have a reputation – fair or not – of playing fast and loose with cherished franchises like Star Trek and The Transformers, and we haven’t yet seen what they have done with (or to) The Amazing Spider-Man in the second of Webb’s films. I’m not a Trekkie, so I wasn’t as frustrated by the changes made to Star Trek Into Darkness (and Khan, specifically) as, say, this guy. But if they hopelessly blunder Electro (Jamie Foxx) or The Rhino (Paul Giamatti), I might begin to understand the anger that seems to be expressed online every time these screenwriters sign on to a project. (And believe me, they sign on to a lot of lucrative projects.)

For now, Spider-Man fans are encouraged to keep an open mind. The series is bouncing along at a decent clip. The footage shown in Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con was incredible. Webb is laying a foundation for a strong story to tell, and if Spidey 3 takes shape the way I think it’s going to take shape, we’ll have a new take on the classic Green Goblin story to enjoy – with Chris Cooper or possibly Dane DeHaan in the Goblin suit, enacting personal revenge on Peter Parker. Sony has The Amazing Spider-Man 3 heading to theaters on June 10, 2016. And now we know who will be putting the pen on the paper for that sequel. Are you excited … or concerned?

The Holy Trinity of The Amazing Spider-Man, at the moment, is Avi Arad, Marc Webb and Matt Tolmach. Oh, they owe everything to Stan Lee and Steve Ditko – the creators of Marvel’s immensely popular superhero. But Arad, Webb and Tolmach are the trio currently driving the current big screen interpretation of Spider-Man, and they came to San Diego Comic-Con with fresh footage and a wealth of information under their arms.

Sony was nice enough to get me a one-on-one interview with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 producer Tolmach during this year’s Con. We spoke during the initial Amazing Spider-Man press run, when the team was still nervous about introducing a new Peter Parker – and a British one, at that, in Andrew Garfield. But given that film’s success, Tolmach seemed more confident in their shared vision, and more eager to share with fans what they have in store for Spider-Man 2.

Here are the five most interesting things I learned about the ongoing Spider-Man universe from Tolmach.

1. As expected, they are mapping out a much larger Spider-Man Cinematic Universe.

Tolmach spoke about the casting of character actors like Paul Giamatti, Jamie Foxx, Dane DeHaan and Chris Cooper for supporting parts in the upcoming sequel, noting that you do not add these players and waste them on one or two scenes. “We’re thinking long term,” he tells me. “As you know, we came out and announced we’re going to make a third movie and a fourth movie. [So] we’re seeding a universe.

“In our movie, Electro is the villain,” Tolmach continued. “He’s the focus of what we’re doing. But how cool is the idea that there are other villains out there? It portends all kinds of trouble for Spider Man down the road … [because] Oscorp is this sort of breeding ground for these creatures and these characters. But yes, we’re world building.”

2. The Sinister Six is a possibility.

One theory constantly floated by Spider-Man fans suggests that Webb’s movies are including villains like The Lizard, The Rhino, Electro and multiple Goblins so that our hero will one day face a massive villain team up in The Sinister Six. When asked about this, Tolmach tells me, “It is wishful thinking on [the fan’s] part, but it doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. It’s a great idea. I mean, we haven’t yet nailed down what … there’s the Spider Man movies, and then there are the movies that grow out of the universe of Spider Man. We haven’t defined those yet. We’re spending a lot of time thinking about it. That’s an honest answer.”

3. Announcing Spidey 3 and 4 didn’t drastically change their plans for part two … despite what Shailene Woodley thinks.

Shortly after we found out that Sony already has two additional Spider-Man movies on the docket, we learned that Woodley’s Mary Jane Watson would be scrubbed out of Spidey 2 altogether … and likely recast. But Tolmach ensures me that the game plan for Webb’s second Spidey was always in place, and the date claiming was more of what he calls “putting a flag in the ground.” He says this shows that Sony and Team Spidey is thinking ahead, a la Marvel, instead of reacting to success with their hands tied behind their back.

“Number Two is always Two, and we’re still doing what we were doing on it,” he said. “Announcing the new dates puts a flag in the ground in terms of, ‘Those are our release dates, and leave that alone.’ It gives you a working structure. If the release date is here, I know when we need to be shooting, when we need the script. It allows you to actually plot your course and to build the universe a little bit more systematically. When you know you’re making this one and that one, you start thinking a little bit more globally. It’s a cool thing.”

4. They sacrificed secrecy and opted to shoot in public to give The Amazing Spider-Man 2 as “New York” an atmosphere as possible.

“We were either going to shoot this in a vacuum on a sound stage and sacrifice, in this case New York,” Tolmach told me about the months-long shoot, which wrapped once Webb posted this commemorative video.

“We shot the whole thing in New York,” Tolmach continued. “And I’d rather go out there and have people catch glimpses of what we’re doing and have real sets and locations. So you’ll get the sense, even more in this movie, that Peter’s a New York kid defending this city because we shot the whole thing [in New York]. The last one, we didn’t shoot in New York. In this movie, you can’t help it. I mean, he is Peter Parker on a building in New York, on a street in New York. It’s real. You feel that.”

5. Finally, we’ll likely see a full trailer in the fall.

That’s what Tolmach tells me. And if I were to guess, I’d say that it will include the same footage of Electro and Spider-Man that captivated the crowds in Hall H. For more on my reaction, watch the clip below.

Spider-Man fanatics see characters like Electro (Jamie Foxx), the Rhino (Paul Giamatti), the Lizard (Rhys Ifans) and multiple Goblins (Chris Cooper, Dane DeHaan), and immediately, they are going to start speculating: When is Spidey going to fight The Sinister Six?

It makes sense, on so many levels. Sony recently confirmed that they would be doing Part 3 and 4 of the current Amazing Spider-Man series, with Andrew Garfield in the mask and tights of our friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man. And while Electro, without a doubt, is the main villain of next summer’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the Sinister Six is on the minds of the creative team behind the franchise at the moment.

At least, that’s what ASM producer Matt Tolmach tells me during an exclusive 1:1 interview at San Diego Comic-Con. I brought up to Tolmach the perpetual rumor on message boards and chat rooms about the Sinister Six, and the possibility of having Spidey fight multiple villains in the same film. Is there any truth to that rumor, or is it wishful thinking on the part of a passionate fan base? Here’s Tolmach:

Tolmach went on to talk about the actors who they have signed on for the villainous roles in the building Spider-Man universe, saying that it’s intentional to have this level of talent on hand for future stories, and that every actor they have hired has been excited about participating in future Spidey movies. In doing so, Tolmach confirms a piece we write a while back saying that Webb is constructing a much bigger Spider-man cinematic universe with each new film.

Webb was a little more hesitant to commit to The Sinister Six … understandably. “You want to build out the possibility of something more,” Webb told me during our Comic-Con interview. But when I asked him about The Sinister Six, he was very candid:

Webb and I dived into specifics, including the importance of Ravenscroft, the role Felicity Jones is playing, whether Norman Osborn’s actually sick in ASM 2 and much more-- more of that interview will come later. But that’s what they have to say about The Sinister Six in a Spider-Man movie … at the moment.

Our intrepid Spider-Man obsessive Sean O'Connell is wandering around San Diego buzzing like a hornet right now, having just interviewed The Amazing Spider-Man 2's director Marc Webb and producer Matt Tolmach. He got a ton of great information, and will be bringing it all to you this afternoon as Sony prepares to kick off their big Hall H panel for the movie, but for now we can tell you that Webb helped us clear up a major rumor that was circling online-- and one that we admit we helped spread.

In a recent interview the British actress Felicity Jones let slip that, while the name of her Amazing Spider-Man 2 character is still a secret, she's "the Goblin's girlfriend." That got us all turned around, assuming that Harry Osborn-- played by Dane DeHaan in the film-- would be taking over the Green Goblin mantle, even though we haven't yet his father Norman, who traditionally becomes the Green Goblin first.

Luckily while talking to Marc Webb today he clarified one very small but very crucial thing for us: Jones's character has a "special relationship" with Norman Osborn, not Harry.

Now that's a little creepy, given that Jones is 29 and Cooper is 62, but it makes a lot more sense for Spider-Man fans. If Jones is playing the Goblin's girlfriend in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, that means that Norman will become the Goblin this time. If they follow standard Spider-Man canon (and the plot line established in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films), Norman Osborn will be defeated by Spider-Man, leading Harry to take on the Green Goblin mantle and go to war against Peter Parker, his closest friend.

Though we're now expecting the film's Hall H panel to reveal Norman Osborn becoming the Green Goblin, the central villain of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is still Electro, and if the Green Goblin makes an appearance, it will be a small one. We're still operating on the assumption that Webb is mapping out a gigantic cinematic universe around Spider-Man, and a lot of what he told Sean in the interviews confirms that (without saying it out loud, of course). But Felicity Jones didn't get that Goblin info from nowhere… and now that we know she's teaming up with Norman, that gives us a pretty strong sense that the Green Goblin transformation will happen before The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is over.

We'll have much more from both Webb and Tolmach and the Hall H panel later today-- yes, the Spider-Man speculation has really only started today-- so stay tuned!

Set up in Hall H this afternoon at Comic-Con is Entertainment Weekly's Visionaries panel, which celebrates some of Hollywood's current "uncompromising directors" who have been electrifying audiences with their work, and who have some highly anticipated projects coming up. For Marc Webb, it's The Amazing Spider-Man 2. For Alfonso Cuaron, it's sending Sandra Bullock into space for Gravity. And Edgar Wright, it's a pub-crawl between five childhood friends who end up facing apocalyptic circumstances. We'll be live-blogging the panel for those of you who can't be here.

Here's the official panel description:

2:39 p.m. - Moderator introduces Alfonos Cuaron, Marc Webb and Edgar Wright to the panel. Lots of cheers for all three directors, especially when the moderator mentions their movies. Edgar jokes that he's only on the panel because he has the same initials as Entertainment Weekly.

2:41 - Moderator asks about bringing things to the screen. Edgar Write talking about World's End wrapping up a "thematic trilogy" (Shawn of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and now The World's End). For Marc Webb, it's taking simple, personal relationships and putting them into a massive story. He says the things he enjoy most are the relationship stuff, which ground these movies. If you don't have that, you can lose something. Cuaron talks about one single human floating in space completely alone and turning that character into a suspenseful action film with minimal elements. He wanted to put the audience in space with their characters.

2:45 - Cuaron talking about what it took to shoot the movie. When he grounded the script it became clear that the technology doesn't exist. Floating in zero gravity the whole time is the example he uses. He talked about trying the "vomit comet" - a plane that goes up and plummets, so the person inside is free falling and floating. Cuaron says it's fun, but you're limited to the space inside the plane and it lasts for 20 seconds, so it was impossible to use it. So they had to invent some other stuff. Asked to explain the "stuff" he says it's boring as hell. the core of it is robotics. For a big chunk of the film, Bullock was inside a 9x9 cube in which all the walls are LED lights. She was in the center that gyrated a little bit. Around her was her environment. He's using a water bottle to explain that everything was moving around her. He says when Sandra wasn't in the cube, she was working out because that's the only way to endure the whole thing.

Cuaron says it was easier when Bullock and Clooney were separated because when they were together they turned against him. He said they had a competition of impersonating his accent. He said they both sucked but they're funny. "They play me as a Cuban," he said. "Not as a Mexican."

2:49 - Moderator turns to Marc. Webb says the first movie they built massive rigs 300 feet long to fly Spider-Man or a stunt double under an overpass in NY. They used the stuff they made in the computer as a reference. The human body can only take so much. The reality of the physics is mind-boggling and sort of impossible to ask an actor to do. Now he's talking about villains and choosing Electro. He always though Electro was the most fun challenge of the movie because there's something so magnificent to a creature that can merge and blend. He was always fascinated and terrified by something that could disappear. Peter Parker's so grounded. He has normal problems to deal with and then he has to fight gods. Webb found it interesting to combine those two worlds. He's talking about The Fog of War documentary and having to empathize with the enemy. In order to take on Electro, Parker has to empathize with him.

2:54 - Wright's turn to talk about action. He tried to do the action sequences without cutting, so you believe the actors are doing it because they are doing it. They had to evaluate the cast members. All six of them trained with a stunt team. The fights were designed to be done all in one sequence. He says the actors were really up for it. He says you have to make it a point of pride. "They really rose to the challenge," he says. There was a scene in Hot Fuzz where they had a fight with teenagers, but it didn't work because they had to use adult stunt performers. In WE, there's a fight with 40-year-olds vs. teenagers, in which there were teen stunt performers. One of them was Chloe Moretz's stunt person for Kick-Ass when he was 12. Wright says he's going to be huge. Marc Webb says one of the best stunts they did wasn't even an action scene. It was Andrew Garfield with a coffee cup. He references Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, talking about the timing and choreography. "You sense it in the room," Webb says. "When you can sit and watch and absorb characters doing extraordinary things."

3:03 - Cuaron agree with Webb that the physical comedy is almost a lost art now. Wright talking about the thrill of doing a scene in one take and looking over it afterward to see if they got everything. He says audiences are very aware of how films are made and how quick-cutting is used. "I think when it's clearly done in one take, people really respond to it." He praises Buster Keaton's poker face during his stunts. Cuaron speaks about the viewers' awareness of real time and how that's affect with a lot of cutting.

3:06 p.m. Edgar Wright talking about a fight in the bathroom. It's not just about arranging the scene, but also putting the camera in the right place. Marc says Nick Frost's stunts were "so fucking fantastic." Wright jokingly reprimands him for swearing and then says again that they all did their own stunts. "It was really fun to design these fights with lots of limbs and heads coming off," Wright says, adding "Rated R." Wright talks about Shawn of the Dead and the scene early on when Shawn goes to the store and we can see the zombies in the background but he doesn't notice them. He says they didn't have the street blocked off. And there was a drunk guy who walked through the set and said "Fuck you!" because he didn't care that they were shooting the movie. And then Wright apologized for swearing.

3:10 - Cuaron says the adrenaline is addictive. He talks about keeping on doing it, even when everyone tells you not to. For Children of Men, they were still prepping the movie ten days in. The pressure was on, especially when the head of the studio came to talk to him about the hold-up. He talks about shooting one scene where blood splashed onto the lens. Cuaron called "cut" because there was an explosion so they didn't hear him and they kept shooting, so it turned out to be a happy accident (or a miracle).

3:14 p.m. - Marc Webb says he enjoys being surprised by what the actors bring to something. It keeps him on his toes. He thinks the audience can detect when something is performative. He says those happy accidents happen all the time. Wright considering the "happy accidents" scenario. He's talking about really cold weather conditions and how that can add to the performances, when the characters are getting more drunk and desperate. He talks about Simon breaking his hand during shooting. He said he was ok and did five more takes, then revealed to Wright the next day that the doctor says his hand is broken. Wright attributes Simon's determination to plow through five more takes, suffering in silence, to the fact that he's a producer and knew effect the hold-up would've had on shooting.

3:18 - Time for fan questions! First question is about showcasing ones skills. "What did you create and how did you manage to showcase more than one skill?" Wright says if you want to get into writing and directing, the good thing is to try to do every job so you can see what it's like from those perspectives. Wright says if you want to be a director, it's a good idea to step into everybody else's shoes, even in front of the camera, just to see how it feels. He also says you might find other fields that you might want to do.

3:21 - Next question is what inspiration the directors drew from for their current films. Cuaron mentions Spielberg's first film. Webb jokes, Operation Dumbo Drop. Wright says there were a lot of British sci-fi films when he was growing up. They're talking about their mentors. Webb was taught to edit by a man named Doug Pray (sp?), which led to him doing music videos after that. Cuaron says the idea of having mentors is something that keeps the ball rolling from generation to generation. He did 15 movies as a boom operator. he worked his way up from there. He worked as an assistant director to a director whom he considers a mentor. He said the name, but I didn't catch it. He also says he learned from Sydney Pollack to hand things down to the next generation. Wright says Sam Raimi's story really inspired him. He was 18 when he did Evil Dead and that really inspired Wright to make movies.

3:28 - Someone asked the directors about Spielberg's comments about the state of movies today. Moderator references something Spielberg said about tiered pricing and the effect that might have on films. Cuaron says he thinks a big change is coming. Talks about how you could find small movies in theaters years ago. Today it's all big movies in the multiplexes. Multiplexes are the monopoly of big films, but there are other means of distributing films now, which is exciting. The multiplexes might end up being more about big movies. Webb brings up TV, saying a lot of wonderful writers have migrated to TV. TV shows are novelistic. "The kinds of storytelling you can engage in there is pretty awesome," Webb says. Cuaron says he doesn't think of it as drama vs. fantasy or drama vs. action. He says we're living in an age where franchises and sequels are required. Wright says there's a place for everything. There's an appetite for original films. He says the multiplex needs to get more diverse. There has to be a chance for an indie film to break out. "If we don't start doing more original films, there will be nothing to remake in 30 years time," Wright says.

3:34 - Cuaron says he agrees it's not always necessary for a film to be 3D and in a lot of cases, it's an afterthought from a money-making perspective. He says they worked meticulously to make Gravity great in 3D. He says 3D takes away color and resolution. With all of those misgivings, he still preferred 3D in the case of Gravity. He says 3D is a fantastic tool, but it doesn't need to be universalized. It needs to have a reason. Webb says he shot The Amazing Spider-Man in 3D and stereo. They conceived of the movie in specific circumstances and scenes with 3D in mind. He goes on to talk about the challenges of filming in 3D. He does think it can be exquisite at its best. But it can also be really terrible. Wright says he thinks most people are lukewarm on the format because they've seen too many bad ones where it's been done after the fact. Wright references Life of Pi, Hugo and Avatar as great examples of 3D done right.

3:38 - Last question. What's next? Wright jokes he'll do Ant Man in 3D. He says it's taking so long because he wants 2015 effects. Marc Webb says he wants to finish The Amazing Spider-Man 2. There's other projects he wants to do down the road. He mentions wanting to do musicals and doing something physical-comedy related. He seems to be intentionally vague there but it sounds like he has something in mind. Wright says he'd like to work with Pegg and Frost again but the just finished this film so it sounds like it's too soon for him to think ahead. Cuaron says Gravity took longer than he thought. Cuaron says he wants to do a horror movie.

As was revealed back when the movie was still in the early stages of production, Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will feature a whole new look for Andrew Garfield's version of the superhero as the character has gotten a costume upgrade. But now we have the chance to get a detailed look at it. You can see the image above, but heading over to the Entertainment Weekly site will yield even more about the suit. Not only will you see a bigger image, clicking on each of those yellow dots provides info about ways in which the suit for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is different than the first movie.

As many have noted, the most notable change in the costume is the eyes on the mask. In The Amazing Spider-Man, Webb decided to go for a smaller design with a yellow tint - but that apparently went out the window for the new movie. Instead, the eyes take up almost half of the mask and are bright white - just like in the Ultimate Spider-Man comics that have inspired the rebooted series thus far. The film's director gloated to the magazine about the redesign, saying, "We've got the best eyes of any suit. Really big, very warm white eyes."

Next we have a classic Spider-Man accessory that didn't make it into the last movie: the belt. Webb undid some of the changes that Sam Raimi made to the character in his movies by once again having Peter Parker make his own webshooters, but one key detail that he forgot was the utility belt that Spidey uses to store his extra webbing. That part of the costume design will be back for The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but it may not be functional. Said costume designer Deborah Lynn Scott of the addition to the suit, "Why exactly does Spidey need a belt? I don't know. He just always has. There are rules to comic-book characters."

Also being given an update is the famous spider symbol on the superhero's chest, which, believe it or not, is actually being constructed as an homage to the Raimi era costume. In addition to talking about how they designed the symbols look on a computer in 3D form, the magazine says that "the little red-brick pattern" behind the symbol "is intended as an homage to the Tobey Maguire-era suit"

Be sure to head over to EW's site to read about how they decided to change the coloring and shades of the suit this time around and how the mechanical webshooters will be getting an upgrade.

Scripted by Alex Kurtzman and Bob Orci, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will see the continuing adventures of Garfield as the masked superhero as he continues to try and balance both his secret and personal lives. The movie promises to introduce a number of new characters from Spider-Man's long history, including Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan), Max Dillon a.k.a. Electro (Jamie Foxx), Norman Osborn a.k.a. The Green Goblin (Chirs Cooper) and Aleksei Sytsevich a.k.a. The Rhino (Paul Giamatti). Also set to reprise their roles from the first movie are Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, Sally Field as Aunt May and Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben. Colm Feore, Felicity Jones, B.J. Novak, and Sarah Gadon have been confirmed as being in the movie as well, though their roles have not yet been revealed.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will be in theaters on May 2 , 2014 and stay tuned next week for all of our coverage of the film at San Diego Comic-Con.

The 100th issue of any comic book series usually is commemorated with a double-sized issue or a centerfold illustration that can be folded out into a cool, collectible poster. Marc Webb doesn’t have a comic book, though he’s shooting one of the most anticipated comic-book adaptations in recent memory: The Amazing Spider Man 2. And to commemorate his 100th day of shooting on the sequel, Webb does what he has been doing all production long. He Vimeo’d an amazing behind-the-scenes video of a motion shot that frames Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) on a high perch, overlooking the city he has sworn to protect.

Parker looks so troubled in the 3-second clip, slouching his shoulders and dropping his head into his hand as Webb’s cameras pan over the (safely harnessed) actor from above and on all sides. Could he still be lamenting the loss of Capt. Stacy (Denis Leary) from the original film? Or did Peter go back on his death-bed promise to keep Gwen safe … with disastrous results? We continue to speculate that the casting of Chris Cooper as Norman Osborn – and the Green Goblin – spells disaster for Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacey. Does this pivotal shot show us Parker’s mournful reaction to a failure to save his true love from a tall bridge?

The clips also demonstrates something that I loved about Webb’s first movie (and that I continue to see in elements he has shared so far for ASM 2). He conveys a sense of space, of a city’s sprawl, while also placing Peter in a small corner of it – as if to suggest, “This little person must find the courage to rise to extreme heights to defend this city and its residents.” One of my favorite shots from Webb’s first Spider-Man has Peter in costume standing on a rooftop overlooking the expanse of Manhattan … and you wonder how one man can stop all of the crime in such a vast area. The sentiment is echoed in a photo Webb Tweeted a few days ago. It’s breathtaking.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 rolls along with its production, aiming for a May 2, 2014 release date. We expect Team Spidey to be at Comic-Con in July with plenty to share regarding the new Spider-Man movie. And maybe, just maybe, a trailer will arrive soon, reminding folks that Web Head kicks off the summer blockbuster season next year. Be ready.

When it was revealed yesterday that Canadian actress Sarah Gadon had joined the cast of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, there was immediate speculation that she was going to be taking over the role of Mary Jane Watson. And, really, it was fairly logical conclusion to make. Earlier this week we learned that there was going to be a major shakeup between The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and The Amazing Spider-Man 3 that would see all of the scenes featuring Spider-Man's redheaded love interest shift to the second sequel instead of the first. Unfortunately, this left actress Shailene Woodley with a bad scheduling problem, and she was forced to be cut from the movie completely. We've all been assuming that the studio has been searching for a new actress to play Mary Jane in the new comic book movie, but apparently that's not the case.

A reporter from The Wrap has "100% confirmed" that while Gadon has indeed joined the cast of the superhero sequel, she will not be playing Mary Jane. Instead, he says that she will only be in the movie briefly and that MJ "will NOT appear until Part THREE." This makes Gadon just the most recent addition to the cast of the film who doesn't have a known character name. Colm Feore, B.J, Novak and Felicity Jones all play mystery roles in the movie, though Feore has been rumored to be Adrian Toomes/The Vulture and there's been speculation that Jones could be playing Felicia Hardy/Black Cat.

For those unfamiliar with Gadon, she is probably best known for her roles in the David Cronenberg films A Dangerous Method and Cosmopolis. She recently signed on to co-star with Luke Evans in the upcoming Dracula and will also be lending her voice to the upcoming animated film The Nut Job.

If we assume for a moment that Jones is playing Black Cat, what does that mean for Gadon's potential role. If I had to guess my money would be on Betty Brant, the secretary to J. Jonah Jameson at the Daily Bugle. If Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) ends up getting a job there in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 it would make plenty of sense to have an actress on board for the role, even if it is just a "brief" appearance.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is being directed by Marc Webb and is based on a script by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. Not much is known about the plot of the film at this point, though we do know that Jamie Foxx will be playing Spidey's chief foe, the electricity enhanced Max Dillon a.k.a. Electro. Both Emma Stone and Sally Field will return as love interest Gwen Stacy and Aunt May, respectively, and other new additions to the series include Chris Cooper (as Norman Osborne), Dane DeHaan (as Harry Osborne), and Paul Giamatti (as Aleksei Mikhailovich Sytsevich/Rhino). Look for the film in theaters on May 2, 2014.

Meet the new Mary Jane Watson … Canadian actress Sarah Gadon! Maybe...

The casting carousel for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has been spinning out of control lately, and ET Canada now confirms via Twitter that Gadon “is joining The Amazing Spider-Man franchise” in a role that they do not specify. Connect the dots, though, and it appears that Gadon will be the new Mary Jane.

How did we get here? Rumors have been flying around for the past 48 hours that Sony Pictures planned to recast the role of M.J. in Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 after news broke that Shailene Woodley no longer would be in the upcoming Spidey sequel. At the time, speculation suggested that the Spectacular Now starlet would simply see the footage she’d already shot for Webb pushed back to The Amazing Spider-Man 3, which recently was plugged in to a June 10, 2016 release date.

Then the news pattern shifted. It was suggested – for reasons that have not been confirmed – that Woodley’s footage would be scrapped (she’d only spent a few days on the Amazing Spider-Man 2 set, filming what we hear is two or three small scenes), and the role would be recast for Spider-Man parts three and four. The prevalent notion was that Woodley was committed to the multi-part Divergent film adaptation, and her schedule would conflict with what was now a sprawling Spider-Man franchise.

Enter Gadon.

What do we know about the actress? Her credits include two David Cronenberg movies, A Dangerous Method and the recent Cosmopolis. Keeping it in the family, she also starred in Brandon Cronenberg’s disturbing thriller Antiviral. And her biggest roles, at least in her native Canada, were on the television programs The Border, Being Erica and Happy Town. None of those are quite as big, though, as playing Spider-Man’s love interest in a major superhero franchise.

Where does this leave Mary Jane, as a character? We thought she might surface in the background of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but now that sounds like the immediate sequel will be devoted to the Peter-Gwen storyline – a classic that deserves all the time it needs to develop.

The news that Sony is greenlighting three Spidey sequels, though, suggests that the studio is backing the development of a Sinister Six story … and M.J. could be a huge part.

The Mary Jane Saga has been taking several turns recently. ET Canada says Gadon’s involvement is confirmed. We’re hoping Webb or Sony weighs in, and soon, but for now, it sounds like we might have found Woodley’s Spider-replacement.

Stan Lee has made some fun cameos in the movies based on the characters he created. It's a clever reveal in Iron Man when Tony Stark mistakes him for Hugh Hefner, it's funny when he walks out of a building with Lou Ferrigno in Hulk, and the scene when he gets rejected from the wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm in Fantastic 4 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer is one of the few good parts of the movie. But my personal favorite in the collection would have to be Lee's tiny role in Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man, playing a music-loving librarian who is completely oblivious to an epic Spidey vs. Lizard battle going on right behind him. And we can't wait to see what Webb has in store for the superhero creator next,

The above photo is the latest from Webb's Twitter feed, announcing the 85th day of production. The filmmaker titled the picture "Double Take," but it's pretty hard to tell exactly what he means by that. Does he perhaps mean that the audience will do a double take while looking at this image, realizing that they recognize the guy in the bottom left corner? Or is it something else entirely?

Scripted by Alex Kurtzman and Bob Orci, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 brings back Andrew Garfield as the titular hero and sees him going up a slew of new villains, including Electro (Jamie Foxx), Norman Osborn (Chris Cooper), and The Rhino (Paul Giamatti). Emma Stone, Sally Field, and Martin Sheen will return as their characters from the previous film, while other newcomers include Shailene Woodley as Mary Jane Watson, Dane DeHaan as Harry Osborn and Colm Feore, Felicity Jones and B.J. Novak in unrevealed roles.

While all of the Spidey movies, from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy to Marc Webb’s immediate reboot The Amazing Spider-Man, feature some pretty amazing stunts and CGI wizardry, they’re altogether lacking in the sense of humor department, where fresh realism gives way to hokey one-liners, entrenched in the world of high school and nerddom. So what better way for Webb to tweak the comedic appeal to his Amazing Spider-Man 2 than to add The Office’s B.J. Novak to the cast. If he can add some wide-eyed chuckles to Inglorious Basterds, why not to a superhero movie?

Though, if one were to picture how Novak could sprinkle laughs into the film, one probably wouldn’t picture him looking deviously professional with black-rimmed glasses and gelled-back hair. Webb’s accompanying message to this latest Twitter post certainly doesn’t change that outlook.

If he’s working for Norman Osborne (Chris Cooper) at Oscorp, then perhaps he’ll be a friend to Harry (Dane DeHaan). Of course, he could also be a budding romantic interest for either Gwen (Emma Stone) or Mary Jane (Shailene Woodley). Or even Aunt May (Sally Field), if the filmmakers were feeling particularly risqué. The point is, really, we don’t know what Novak will do in the film, other than look studious and clean-shaven. Would it be too much to ask for Mindy Kaling to be his on-again, off-again girlfriend?

The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which also stars Andrew Garfield, Jamie Foxx, Paul Giamatti, and Martin Sheen will sling its way into theaters nationwide on May 2, 2014.

Is Sony really cool with Marc Webb tweeting photos from the set of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 as he films in New York City? Does the studio have to approve of his pics before they are shared> And is he going to be able to maintain a visual diary of the production on every single day of the shoot?

So far, Webb has been impressively consistent, sharing photos of real cameras, of tantalizing Oscorp equipment, and a No. 14 locker that really stirred the pot with Spidey fans. The latest photo isn’t nearly as enticing, though I do love Webb’s #dramamine hashtag, shared on the director’s Twitter feed:

This looks like a warehouse scene, which has been green-screened to likely allow Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) to swing through the skies of New York City. That’s what “Dramamine” means, right? I’m trying to figure out what that cylinder-shaped device is in the monitor, because in the background, it only looks like gridwork to support equipment. Maybe Webb figured that after the possible Venom tease and the #happybirthday hashtag, he needed to back off a little and give fans a simple, straightforward look at some behind-the-scenes production photography.

Webb needs to start sharing shots of his cast in character … or perhaps a pic of Garfield in the updated Spidey suit. Then again, I’m on the fence about how much I want Webb to share on this Twitter feed. Directors shouldn’t spoil sequels. Leave that to the movie bloggers! The Amazing Spider-Man 2 continues filming in New York, and is aiming for a May 2, 2014 release date.

It’s possible Marc Webb will tweet a photo from the set of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which recently began production in New York City, every day the movie shoots.

Mind you, it’s early. But on day two, Webb is two-for-two. He launched the Twitter production diary here with a photograph of his camera operator, Phil. He hashtagged #anamorphic and #film, confirming that Webb planned to forgo digital and go the old-school route for at least part of the film. Brilliant! He followed that up with this photo on his official Twitter feed, with the message “Day 2” and the hashtag #oscorp:

It’s clear that Oscorp, which was introduced in the initial film, will continue to be the driving force behind the threats facing Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man. Peter’s parents worked for Oscorp. So did Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), who morphs into the Lizard. And if the rumors of The Rhino come true, he’ll likely be a product of Oscorp experiments.

Of course, we’re also going to have to meet Norman Osborn at some point … followed by his alter ego, the Green Goblin.

The highlight of my year so far remains Webb retweeting my theories about the Amazing Spider-Man sequel and the places the announced villains might fall in the grand scheme of a larger Spider-Man universe. Oscorp, according to my theory, is the sun around which many larger Spidey planets have to revolve, and this photo from Webb seems to confirm it.

The Amazing Spider-Man sequel just began shooting. It’s aiming for a May 2014 release date, with Garfield, Emma Stone, Shailene Woodley, Dane DeHaan, Sally Field and Jamie Foxx confirmed for its cast. Follow Webb on Twitter. He just might share something with us every day of the shoot.

Rhys Ifans now has dozens of titles to his name, but Notting Hill still proves to be a fan favorite. While director Marc Webb does note Notting Hill as well, it’s Ifans’ ability to present a darker side and his Shakespearian pedigree in Enduring Love that influenced him to cast Ifans as Dr. Curt Connors in The Amazing Spider-Man.

Eager to find out why his parents disappeared when he was a child, Peter Parker’s (Andrew Garfield) search brings him to Oscorp where his father once worked alongside Dr. Curt Connors. Desperate to find a way to regrow human tissue and restore his missing arm, the threat of the termination of his research leads Connors to recklessly inject himself with his serum, successfully bringing his arm back, but also turning him into a gigantic lizard.

Rather than simply get the day off when Dr. Connors shifted into lizard mode, Ifans himself did work to influence the computer-generated performance. When Ifans wasn’t working closely with the effects team, he was spending quality time with “Kermit,” the green sock that enabled the filmmakers to remove Ifans’ arm in post-production. However, even with getting a firsthand look at what it takes to make all of this movie magic happen, seeing the final product on the big screen was the most exciting part of the process for the actor.

Hear all about that and more from Ifans himself in the interview below and be sure to catch The Amazing Spider-Man for yourself in theaters today!

This feature may look familiar to regular readers of Cinema Blend. For the past two years I have been crafting guides for movies like Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, and, most recently, The Avengers, but now we are taking a step away from the Marvel Cinematic Universe at diving head first into the universe of everyone’s favorite friendly, neighborhood superhero. At midnight tonight theaters around the country will be showing the first public screenings of Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man and I’m here to get you prepared.

Below you will find a list of ten things you need to know before heading to the theater for your screening of the new wall-crawler flick, but this time around I’ve added an extra twist. In addition to laying out how certain characters, devices and locations from the comic book world figure into the new movie, I’ve also included descriptions of how the details were dealt with by director Sam Raimi in his Spider-Man trilogy. Read on for a full dose of Spidey knowledge and be careful towards the end of the article where SPOILERS tread!

The Spider Bite

In The Comics: The story of how Midtown High’s only professional wallflower became Spider-Man began when he first decided to go to a radioactivity exhibit at the local science museum. During the middle of an experiment that Peter is watching, a spider crosses into a radioactive beam, lands on Peter’s hand, and bites him. The effects of the bite are almost instantaneous, as Peter leaves the museum and immediately shows off his spider-sense skills. And thus, Spider-Man was born

How Raimi Did It: For Spider-Man Raimi changed a few things but largely kept the story the same. Rather than attending the science exhibit by himself, the plot instead has Peter visit a genetics laboratory as part of a school trip. The lab is doing experimentation with arachnids and have used science to create 15 of what they call “super-spiders.” Mary Jane points out that the display only has 14 spiders, however, and while the geneticist thinks that some of the scientists may be working on #15, the truth is that it’s inching ever closer to Peter’s hand. Once bitten, it takes a full night for the spider’s advanced DNA to mold with Peter’s, which eventually turns him into Spider-Man.

How The Amazing Spider-Man Does It: Webb chooses not to stray too far from formula either, but does add his own details. He skips the museum and the random genetics lab and replaces them with Oscorp (which is working on cross-species genetics…though we’ll talk more about that later) and instead of hitting Peter’s hand, the advanced spider finds its way to the hero’s neck. I won’t spoil how, when or where, but the effects of the bite take a bit longer than in the first comic and a bit shorter than in Raimi’s Spider-Man.

The Costume

In The Comics: In the first issues of the comics, Peter Parker doesn’t instantly become a benevolent hero the second he discovers that he has the powers of a spider. In fact, he is actually kind of selfish, saying that he will only use his powers to help himself, Aunt May, and Uncle Ben. The costume comes into existence when Peter needs some cash and decides to become a wrestler, wearing a makeshift mask. The suit serves him well in the ring, where he defeats a famous fighter named Crusher Hogan, and afterwards he becomes a novelty television star, which leads him to create the famous suit.

How Raimi Did It: For his take on the origin Raimi stuck pretty close to the comics. In the 2002 movie, Peter puts on a mask and a sweatshirt with a spider on it to become a wrestler so that he will have enough money to buy a car and impress Mary Jane (in the movie the enemy wrestler is named Bonesaw McGraw). After his decision to become a hero and accept his responsibility, the costume receives a major upgrade and starts to look like the one we all know and love.

How The Amazing Spider-Man Does It: Webb took the costume origin in a different direction for the reboot. While I won’t spoil the new machinations here, I will say that it does take a step away from the original story and creates something new while still having nods towards the classic tale.

The Webbing

In The Comics: Spider-Man has gone through many incarnations and therefore details are always going to be conflicting origin stories, but the classic story is that Peter gets bitten by a radioactive spider, starts getting superpowers, and only then has the idea to invent a pair of web-shooters to mount on his wrists. The devices are primarily used for transport, as the wall-crawler uses his webbing to swing through the streets of Manhattan, but they are also a weapon, used to confuse and detain criminals during a beatdown. The drawback, of course, is that he occasionally runs out of webbing and that the devices are subject to the occasional malfunction that leaves our hero vulnerable.

How Raimi Did It: While Raimi’s movies were, in many ways, homages to the classic Spider-Man comics, it was in the webbing department that he changed things up a bit for his movies. Instead of having Peter build a device that allowed him to fire webs, the power came organically from the spider bite that gave him all his other powers (including the ability to stick to walls, spider-sense, increased strength and agility, etc.) It was a controversial issue at the time and in retrospect is even more interesting given that…

How The Amazing Spider-Man Does It: The Amazing Spider-Man returns to the use of web shooters built by Peter. The technology is based on something Peter finds in Oscorp, and his development of the technology is part of the “Becoming Spider-Man” montage.

Oscorp

In The Comics: The Marvel Universe is packed to the brim with evil corporations and organizations, but Oscorp is one of the biggest and baddest. Started by Norman Osborn, the company is one of the biggest science and development organizations in the world, dealing in everything from biology and gene-splicing to nanotechnology and robots.

How Raimi Did It: Oscorp has a significant role in the first two Raimi movies, but doesn’t really play a role in Spider-Man 3. The first film prominently featured Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe) as he worked to fulfill a government contract for a super-strength serum, specialized suit and a glider. When the contract is close to being cancelled, Osborn decides to test the serum on himself and turns into the Green Goblin. In the sequel, Norman’s son Harry (James Franco) is put in charge of Oscorp. He uses the corporation’s finances to support Dr. Otto Octavius and his research into fusion power, but that ends up blowing up in his face.

How The Amazing Spider-Man Does It: Oscorp proves to be a very important setting in the upcoming Spider-Man movie. As mentioned earlier, it’s the new location where Peter Parker first gets bitten (this is actually in-line with the origin story from the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book line), but also where both Dr. Curt Connors and Gwen Stacy work. It’s pretty clear from the get-go that something nefarious is going on behind the scenes of the company, but you’ll just have to watch the movie to find out more about that.

Curt Connors/The Lizard

In The Comics: Dr. Connors, one of Spider-Man’s earliest villains, was actually introduced not in New York City but rather in the Florida everglades. A former army surgeon, Connors was present during an explosion that left doctors no choice but to amputate his right arm. After returning home, the doctor works endlessly to use lizard DNA to try and regenerate his arm, but when he tests a serum on himself he ends up becoming a giant, ferocious Lizard. Spider-Man travels down to Florida and after some trial and tribulation is finally able to give The Lizard an antidote that returns Connors back to normal.

How Raimi Did It: Poor Dylan Baker. The one-armed doctor was portrayed by Baker in both Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3 and before the reboot it looked like they were gearing up to a Lizard storyline – only they never had the chance to get there. The character in the movies is a physics professor at Columbia University, where Peter is a student. Though Connors never turns green and scaly in the Raimi films, he is partially responsible for getting Spider-Man entangled with Doctor Octopus, as Peter writes a paper about Dr. Otto Octavius for Connor’s class.

How The Amazing Spider-Man Does It: Connors, played by Rhys Ifans in the new movie, is taken out of school for the reboot and instead brought back to his scientist roots. In The Amazing Spider-Man the character is one of the key scientists working for Oscorp and has the dream of using cross-species genetics to grow back his missing right arm. In case you didn’t already know, it doesn’t turn out well, either for Connors or the city of New York. The film also gives Connors an important connection to Peter, as he worked with Richard Parker, Peter’s dad, at Oscorp.

The Daily Bugle

In The Comics: The Daily Bugle is classically known as the newspaper that ends up employing Peter Parker as the official photographer of Spider-Man. Led by J. Jonah Jameson, the news outlet is best known for its sensationalistic headlines and tendency to make Spider-Man look like a villain – even in situations where he is clearly the hero.

How Raimi Did It: The Daily Bugle in the comics is completely unchanged in Sam Raimi’s trilogy. Jameson, portrayed by the brilliant J.K. Simmons, is the perfect irascible asshole from the comics who wants to see nothing more than Spider-Man thrown in prison. Many of the other classic Daily Bugle employees make appearances as well, including Robbie Robertson (Bill Nunn), Betty Brandt (Elizabeth Banks), and Eddie Brock (Topher Grace).

How The Amazing Spider-Man Does It: Likely due to the nightmare that will be recasting Jameson (seriously, Simmons was just that perfect), The Daily Bugle doesn’t have a huge presence in the reboot, but it does play a role. Instead of just being a newspaper, the company is actually seen as a news conglomerate, with a hand in cable news and an online presence. This is once again an example of Webb pulling more from the Ultimate Spider-Man universe where The Daily Bugle has made its way into the 21st century.

Richard and Mary Parker

In The Comics: This is once again an area where it depends what origin story you are looking at. While Peter was introduced while living with Aunt May and Uncle Ben, it was eventually revealed that the pair were actually heavily involved with the United States military and were regularly traveling around the world on missions – hence why they had to leave their son behind. In the Ultimate Spider-Man storyline, however, Richard is changed to be a scientist working at Empire State University developing a cure for cancer. Working with Eddie Brock’s father, they develop a suit that can repair its host’s body. Unfortunately, this is the suit that winds up becoming the villain known as Venom.

How Raimi Did It: Richard and Mary Parker play virtually no role in the original Spider-Man trilogy. While they are mentioned once or twice, they’re largely ignored in favor of making the relationship between Peter and his May and Ben stronger.

How The Amazing Spider-Man Does It: Raimi may have chosen to ignore Peter’s parents, but the new film puts them front and center. In the movie Richard and Mary both worked for Oscorp and were actually good friends with Dr. Curt Connors. Because of their connection to a major cross-species genetics experiment, they are forced to go on the run and leave Peter with Ben and May. The plot is driven forward when Peter discovers his father’s old briefcase and the hunt for answers about his parents begins.

Gwen Stacy

In The Comics: While not Peter’s first love – that title goes to Betty Brandt – she is still one of the most important romantic figures in Spider-Man’s life. Peter first meets her while both are attending Empire State University and fall deeply in love. Up until her death the Peter-Gwen relationship has many ups and downs, with some great victories and other tragic losses.

How Raimi Did It: Despite Gwen’s importance in the earliest Spider-Man storylines, the director actually ended up ignoring the character for a long time in favor of the more popular Mary Jane Watson. She does, however, make her feature film debut in Spider-Man 3, played by Bryce Dallas Howard. She is, sadly, largely wasted in the movie, used only to create a miscalculated and unnecessary love triangle between herself, Peter and Mary Jane.

How The Amazing Spider-Man Does It: Once again, this is an example of the new film distancing itself from the previous trilogy. Played by Emma Stone, Gwen is a schoolmate of Peter’s and, as mentioned, an employee at Oscorp. She’s the movie’s primary romantic interest, though her relationship with Peter becomes strained when the titular hero takes on the responsibility of being Spider-Man and finds himself regularly in harm’s way.

George Stacy

In The Comics: When Peter first meets Gwen Stacy, George’s daughter, he has no idea that her father is one of the highest ranking officers of the NYPD. While this would be intimidating for almost anyone, there’s one key piece of information about George that gives Peter some peace of mind: he’s on Spider-Man’s side. There are many in the city that disapprove of the web-slinger’s costumed vigilante act, but George believes that he is actually a force for good. The character meets a tragic end when Spider-Man is doing battle with Doctor Octopus on a rooftop and George ends up getting crushed by a piece of falling debris while trying to save a child.

How Raimi Did It: Much like Gwen, George was kept out of the original Spider-Man trilogy with the exception of the third installment. Played by James Crowell, the character is portrayed as being a friend of the Spider’s and also the bearer of bad news, revealing to Aunt May and Peter that it was actually Flint Marco, also known as The Sandman, who killed Uncle Ben.

How The Amazing Spider-Man Does It: Without J. Jonah Jameson, The Amazing Spider-Man opts to use George Stacy as the non-superpowered antagonist of Spider-Man. George, played by Denis Leary, wants the webhead off of his streets so that he and his fellow officers can work to protect the denizens of New York. He also isn’t a huge fan of Peter dating his daughter, particularly when the young man begins to spout pro-Spidey rhetoric.

SPOILER ALERT

Norman Osborn

In The Comics: Batman has The Joker, Superman has Lex Luthor, and Spider-Man has Norman Osborn, aka the Green Goblin. The head of the aforementioned Oscorp, the version of Norman in the comics is a megalomaniacal man who grew up in an abusive household haunted by a green, goblin-like creature. After stealing some of his companies technology, he actually becomes the monster he envisioned as a child and uses his new powers to terrorize the people of New York. Naturally, this doesn’t sit too well with Spider-Man.

How Raimi Did It: Norman Osborn/The Green Goblin was, of course, the central villain of Raimi’s first Spider-Man movie. As described earlier, Norman uses his company’s super-strength formula and goes mad in the story, which leads him to attack New York on multiple occasions. He has a particular hatred for Spider-Man, who is constantly standing in his way, and upon learning that the hero is Peter Parker Norman begins to torture both Aunt May and Mary Jane. At the end of the film he kills himself with his own gloder while trying to attack Spidey and would later haunt Harry in Spider-Man 2 and drive him to become The Green Goblin II in Spider-Man 3.

How The Amazing Spider-Man Does It: Throughout the film Norman Osborn is mentioned in passing, most notably by Rajit Ratha (Irrfan Khan), who informs the audience that Osborn is dying from a mysterious disease. The cross-species genetics projects that Dr. Connors has been working on are largely being done to try and help cure Osborn. At the end of the film, following the cast credits, there is an extra scene that features Osborn (portrayed by Michael Massee) in the shadows of Dr. Connors’ jail cell, making sure that Peter doesn’t know the truth about his father. We never see the character’s face and he is never addressed by name, but this is the assumption at large.

Regardless of intense action or amazing digital effects, moviemaking largely comes down to story telling and that’s why Marc Webb was the man to direct The Amazing Spider-Man.

The film focuses on the origins of Spider-Man. As a young boy, Peter Parker’s (Andrew Garfield) parents up and leave without any explanation. Years later, he’s still living with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben (Sally Field and Martin Sheen) and has no idea why his parents disappeared. However, between tracking down his father’s old briefcase and getting bitten by a radioactive spider while in the lab of one of his father’s former co-workers, Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), he’s closer than ever to discovering what made his parents abandon him.

Yes there are high-flying stunts and a massive lizard, but having come off of a film like (500) Days of Summer, Webb certainly knows a thing or two about making a grounded movie, and it’s a good thing because The Amazing Spider-Man came with quite a few technical challenges that forced Webb to alter his standard filmmaking process. Check out everything Webb had to say about working with 3D technology, his honest thoughts on whether we needed another Spider-Man movie or not, working with his stars and more, and be sure to catch The Amazing Spider-Man in theaters on Wednesday, July 3rd.

How do you go from (500) Days of Summer to The Amazing Spider-Man? When you were offered the job, did anyone explain the reasoning behind that to you?

Marc Webb: You’d have to ask them what crazy, silly, insane ideas they had, but for me, I was a Spider-Man fan and intrigued by that. It was certainly an intimidating prospect, but my curiosity won out ultimately. I remember thinking about it one night and I was like, the 17-year-old version of myself would kick my ass if you had this opportunity and didn’t take it. That was what launched it. And I think the most important part of Spider-Man is Peter Parker and Peter Parker is an infinitely relatable character and he has that sort of domestic quality and there’s these little moments, whether it’s between him and Gwen or him and Aunt May, that are really relatable and that’s why he’s my favorite superhero. (500) Days of Summer was based on the small moments between two people and finding dimension in that and that was the foundation for The Amazing Spider-Man as well.

Even with this clear plan in mind, when you step onto this massive set with all this action is there an intimidation factor there?

I suppose it would be easy to get lost in that, but I don’t want to do the same thing over and over again. I’m the kind of guy who likes to take creative risks. That’s just who I am and I enjoy trying to challenge myself and the idea of that was really appealing.

In terms of creating the action, I’m a fan of action movies, but action scenes are just scenes like any other scenes. The characters are maybe a little bit different at the beginning than they are at the end, it either advances the plot or it deepens your knowledge of the character and it was fun to explore that. I have to be careful about how I describe it because there was such heat for the dance sequence in the third Spider-Man movie and I don’t want to conjure things, but in a way, shooting action is kind of similar to dance. It’s about movement and capturing certain kinds of movement and I spent a lot of time in a previz environment where there was a lot of trial and error with trying to capture certain kinds of behavior, action and intensity with those characters. And it was really fun!

How did the technical differences here affect your preparation process?

I had time to prepare the technical parts of it. The 3D was tricky because the cameras are really big and it mandates a certain kind of film language. If I was going to do it in 3D, I wanted to make the 3D feel legitimate, authentic and organic to the film, so I spent a lot of time thinking about how to do that. There’s what I called the three V’s of 3D, velocity, volume and vertigo, and I wanted to use those elements and design the sequences around those things. It was a pretty methodical process.

On top of all that, you’ve still got Sam Raimi’s movies, which were not so long ago. Are those kind of like the storm cloud over your head?

Yeah, it’s tricky, but my rationale was, if you look at Harry Potter it’s a closed canon. There’s a handful of books and there’s a beginning and an end to that story. Spider-Man has been going on for 50 years and there’s so many parts of that universe that are interesting to explore and there are always new illustrators, there are always new writers and artists that are working on those comics and I just felt like, why not do that with the movie? As far as going back to the beginning, I think my Peter Parker was different and there are certain things that I felt obliged to explore that I wanted the audience to understand and follow, and I think the only way to do that was to go back to the inception of that character, which is, to me, getting left behind by your parents when you’re six or seven-years-old. It’ll have a huge impact on your life and I wanted to see that and experience that from the ground up.

Hypothetically, had you not been given this job and you just heard there was another Spider-Man movie in the works, do you know what your unbiased thoughts on that might have been?

I’ll tell you what my thought process was initially; I was like, that’s kind of strange. I went through that process, but I thought, is this something I would want to see? That’s a question I seriously asked myself and I was like, well, yeah. Of course! Why not? And I think Spider-Man is a character who belongs on screen and there’s so many parts of it whether it’s the 3D or the Gwen Stacy saga or The Lizard or Peter Parker’s parents, there’s so many parts of the story that I wanted to know about that I was curious. That was my axis point. That’s why I did it.

Another thing that really sets your movie apart from the other three is Andrew’s version of Peter. Toby Maguire was a great Spider-Man, but Andrew so clearly gives 100% of himself to the role. Is that something he achieved on his own or was there any coaching on your part?

It’s interesting because Peter Parker’s relatable. He’s like all of us. That’s the whole point of the character. Andrew goes so deep for a character who’s ostensibly like all of us, he really disappears and he sort of hypnotizes himself. He’s got an incredibly powerful acting sensibility. There was an intellectual process that goes in beforehand and there’s a lot of talking about the impact of his parents leaving and what it means to be an outsider and an outsider by choice, what that means in the context of this movie versus the comics. But then once we started shooting, he kind of disappears and goes into a place. There’s certainly conversations and coaching and discussions that went on all the way through that process, but when you’re on set and you’re in the scene, it’s about finding truth and reality, and there’s a process to his acting that goes pretty deep and that’s what I think allows him to express himself in that way.

Is he the kind of actor who can turn it on and off?

Yeah, he’s not pathological. [Laughs] But he goes into a place and it’s a really fantastic thing to watch. And it’s really great when he interacts with Emma Stone, with that Gwen Stacy character, it ceases to become acting and it becomes behavior. I think there’s a lot of actors that are trying to nail the lines, particularly with young actors, but he goes to a place where it’s about non-verbal communication. My sister-in-law’s a psychologist and one of the things they train psychologists to do is to look at non-verbal communication. People are saying things, but what they say is not really how you access who they are and Andrew understands that in a really profound way.

I can totally tell. It’s so obvious from beginning to end with him.

I feel like Daniel Day Lewis does it and a lot of comedians do it. Like Emma Stone does that, too, and all the Judd Apatow guys, because they’re sort of playing themselves a lot of times and they’re really funny, charismatic people. They disappear simply because it’s somewhat close to who they are a lot of times. Jonah Hill is a great actor in his own right and can do other things rather than just comedy, but it’s that muscle that very naturalistic comedians have, but it’s used for a different purpose. Though Andrew can be very funny.

I could see that with Emma! In certain scenes, all of a sudden she’d have a certain line or body language that reminds you that this is the actress we’ve come to know and love over the years.

Oh, yeah! She’s fantastic because she can do real very well, but also she’s a great improviser. There’s that scene in the hallway between the two of them …

I knew you were going there!

It’s great! “I was touching up stuff.” “You were touching up stuff?” Totally improvised! [Laughs] That’s what happens when you have actors that are alive in a scene and available to react to spontaneity, mistakes and attempts and that was in a movie that has an obligation to scope, bigness, action, fighting and flying through the air, to find little spontaneous moments, which I think in (500) Days of Summer we were allowed to do that too, that’s what gives it its identity. There’s a scene where she’s keeping Denis [Leary] out of her room and the first part of that was written and then the whole thing about cramps, she came up with that on the spot!

The cocoa part was written?

The cocoa part was written.

That felt so natural! I was sure that was something someone just came up with!

No, that was written I think by Steve Kloves, but it was built upon. Emma did that last thing, which I think is hilarious. I remember sitting behind the monitor just feeling like an amazing gift had just been given to all of us.

How about her relationship with Andrew in the movie?

When you’re casting actors, you can’t just throw people together. Even if they’re good actors, sometimes they don’t have a good vibe and we screen tested Andrew and Emma together and there was just some magic multiplier effect. She’s very fast and he can react really well, and she can react really well and there was something about that energy. She could make him funnier and he could encourage her in some of the darker more intense stuff. There was this chemistry. I don’t know how to describe it. It just felt right.

And how about working with Rhys? You’ve got a character who’s live action half the time and then digital for the rest, so what’s it like merging those two to make them both feel like real people?

I had been a fan of Rhys from obviously Notting Hill and stuff, but in Enduring Love I think there’s this really interesting darker side and he’s got this other Shakespearian pedigree. We screen tested him with some other materials, which may be on the DVD. He felt bold enough to do things that were theatrical, but he did it in an earnest and grounded way. In terms of creating the CG performance, we used some of his facial nuances, his voice and his behaviors to inform that character. It’s tricky. The second part of the movie, yeah, his scale is large, [laughs] very large and it’s difficult to reconcile that with a naturalistic human performance, not simply with The Lizard, but with the people that he’s interacting with.

Is he there while you’re shooting those scenes?

Yeah, he was there for a lot of that and then we would record him in the edit room next door to where we were in the lunch room and sometimes we were on a motion capture stage. There were a lot of different techniques that went into creating that performance.

Can you tell me about working with John Schwartzman? He’s shot quite a number of big productions, so did he have any creative technical insight that really helped?

He hadn’t done 3D before so we spent a few months doing the rounds, studying and trying to understand what the value and what the specifics of 3D were. We both are huge lovers of film, anamorphic film formats, but because I wanted to shoot it in stereo, film wasn’t really a legitimate option and so we tried to find the best cameras that would make that experience as fluid as possible. He did a lost of testing with Red cameras, Alexas and F35s and all the cameras and formats that were available at the time and we ultimately decided on the Reds. We had really fantastic supporting from Jim Jannard and the people at Red to make that as smooth an experience as possible and I was very pleased with that. 3D is a new world and there was a little bit of trial and error, but once we got shooting, it was actually very smooth.

What does it take to make the Red a 3D camera?

You have to put it on a rig. We used the threality rig, which is a perpendicular rig, and then you have a mirror that splits the image and shoots the image into both cameras at the same time and you just carry it around usually on a super technocrane or a handheld rig and that’s that. It’s just kind of a slightly bigger version of the normal camera.

How about the workflow? Does it slow down the process at all?

We had DITs and stereographers on the set so there was a pretty big footprint, but we just had to anticipate that.

How about your routine as a director? Working with 3D, do you need to use different preparation methods or bring different tools to set?

It really fundamentally changed the way I shot scenes, particularly in the second half of the movie. You can’t just throw on a little camera and shoot 18 cameras at a time. You have to be very specific about the shot selection, you don’t want edge violations where people are half on screen, you have to be careful about focus, you have to cut in a slower more methodical way. All that requires a level of foresight and technical preparation to make sure you don’t violate the rules of 3D

Does that ever infringe on simply telling a story?

There’s give and take with every different kind of filmmaking. I had that conversation with James Cameron very early on. I said, “Well, do you sacrifice a little bit of the resolution,” and he’s like, “You have to decide what’s gonna make the shot dynamic. Is it gonna be the resolution or is it gonna be the fact that you have depth?” Every film has its own language and this is a way to explore that language. In the crane sequence or in the final sequence, there’s moments where you feel a sense of dimension and vertigo, and sometimes you’re sacrificing other little nuances earlier on to exploit that bigger picture.

With a movie like this there’s always the idea of making more, so is another Spider-Man on your radar right now?

It’s really fun and it’s really exciting and I love the people that I work with, but it also takes a huge chunk out of your life. We’ll see. I just gotta finish the movie and then we’ll figure it out. I haven’t done anything else in the last two years so we’ll see.

Emma Stone has certainly been in her fair share of films at this point, but The Amazing Spider-Man is definitely new territory. She stars as Gwen Stacy, the daughter of the police captain (Denis Leary) and the object of Peter Parker’s (Andrew Garfield) affection. But little does Gwen know, Peter’s got baggage – gigantic lizard man-like baggage.

While The Amazing Spider-Man isn’t much like Superbad, The Help or even Zombieland, there’s something about Stone’s performance that’s appropriately consistent throughout them all. She delivers a brand new character each and every time, but beneath the surface there’s a hint of that actress we’ve come to know and love.

With the release of Men in Black 3 this weekend, we are now two comic book movies deep into Summer 2012. It all kicked off, of course, with the release of The Avengers at the start of May, but the train is moving right along. Soon, though, we will have our third stop, and that will be The Amazing Spider-Man, which comes out on June 29th. We have already seen quite a bit from the movie, including multiple trailers and stills, but today brings a new crop of images that give us some brand new stuff.

Posted over at Entertainment Weekly, the gallery is littered with new shots of Rhys Ifans as Dr. Curt Connors/The Lizard as well as some great stuff of Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy. There are eight images in total and you can see some of them below.

The Amazing Spider-Man, directed by Marc Webb, takes us back to the untold story of Peter Parker's origins as Spider-Man and the greatest mystery of his life: who were his parents. As he digs deeper and deeper to find the truth, he discovers his powers and learns to stand up as a hero when his city is being terrorized by a giant Lizard. Andrew Garfield stars as the titular protagonist and Stone, Ifans, Martin Sheen, Sally Field, Denis Leary, Embeth Davidtz and Campbell Scott co-star. To see more from webhead's new flick head over to our Blend Film Database.

Here’s how I know I’m a serious Spider-Man fan. I suffered through nearly two hours of NBC’s ironically titled America’s Got Talent to catch an anticipated four-minute “Super Preview” of Marc Webb’s upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man. You don’t have to punish yourself in such gratuitous fashion, because the clip’s online this morning, and we’re happy to share it with you below:

Here’s how else I know I’m a serious Spider-Man fan: Even though the “Super Preview” essentially amounted to last week’s full-length trailer plus one semi-full-length scene, I still found it extremely thrilling, and I’m even more excited for Webb’s anticipated blockbuster than I was yesterday. And that’s saying something.

The key lines in the bits of footage added. The bridge-rescue scene (which you’ll see above) shows us a compassionate, intelligent side of Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) that we missed in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy. And the new teaser’s final shot – a decent joke – hammers home the point that Garfield’s Spidey/Parker is going to nail that sarcastic tone die-hard Spider-Man fans want from their vulnerable hero … and can’t understand why it was missing from Raimi’s films.

So far, Sony has done an excellent job selling The Amazing Spider-Man. Now I’m hoping they stop. We’ve seen enough. We don’t want to see any more. Because I’ve studied this new “Super Preview” backwards and forwards, I’m starting to feel like I could play the basic structure of this new film in my head. There are still a few surprises (I hope) that need to be answered. Who is that mysterious figure teasing secrets about Peter’s parents? And what about the famed library fight Stan Lee hinted at? But I want them to be big surprises when the movie opens on July 3. Spidey’s back on the big screen, in 2D, 3D and IMAX. What more do you need?

In Spider-Man lore, The Lizard is a complicated character. Born when Dr. Curt Connors injects himself with lizard DNA to help regrow his lost arm, the creature looks like a horrible monster from the outside, but inside is still the innocent, human Dr. Connors. Because of this complexity there is an added challenge bringing the character to the screen, but while making The Amazing Spider-Man director Marc Webb made sure that that aspect got across.

I am currently at WonderCon in Anaheim, California and prior to the big Sony panel that has been lined up for this evening I had the chance to chat with Webb about his upcoming superhero film. Watch the video below to learn not only about the characterization about The Lizard, but also the scope of the film as well as information about hints given in the movie about the villain for the potential sequel.

The Amazing Spider-Man, directed by Marc Webb, arrives in theaters on July 3rd. For more info on the movie, head over to our Blend Film Database.

Today was a great day if you’re a fan of the wall-crawling, web-slinging superhero known as Spider-Man. We’ve been posting about the Marvel hero all day, from these details about The Amazing Spider-Man that came out this morning; to our own Katey Rich’s analysis of the footage shown around the world this afternoon; to the brand new images that cropped up this evening. But this is bigger than all that.

As first announced earlier today, the second trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man has arrived online and right now you can watch it below!

The Amazing Spider-Man stars Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Martin Sheen, Sally Field, Denis Leary, Campbell Scott, Embeth Davidtz, and Irrfan Khan and is directed by Marc Webb. The movie goes back to the origins of Spider-Man as he uncovers a secret about his parents and, for the first time in a film, does battle with The Lizard. The movie will arrive in theaters on July 3rd and, as always, you can read more about it in our Blend Film Database.

Like it or not, by now most of us have come to accept the fact that they're rebooting the Spider-Man franchise a mere decade after it first launched under the direction of Sam Raimi. It's emblematic of everything that's wrong with the movie industry right now, but who knows - maybe Marc Webb and Andrew Garfield will knock it out of the park. But if things had played out differently, we could be watching a very different Amazing Spider-Man movie come July 3rd. Back when the director's chair was still empty, there were plenty of names rumored to fill it, one of them being David Fincher. His tangential involvement with the franchise stretches back even further, however, because he also turned down the opportunity to direct the original Spider-Man flick back in 1999.

Now an interview with io9 provides a few new insights into why Fincher passed on shepherding Peter Parker, and what his Spider-Man movie would have looked like.

I don't know about you, but as much as I liked the first two Raimi Spider-Man movies, I would have loved to see Fincher's version. That last line is especially intriguing, portraying Parker as "the guy who's settled into being a freak." I would have liked to see a cinematic Spider-Man story that showed Parker well into his career as the web-slinger. We've seen people become super-heroes on screen plenty of times, but rarely do we get an exploration of what it's like 10 years later. How would the world have changed? How would Peter Parker have changed? (Interestingly enough, Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises looks to examine many of those themes this summer.)

Fincher's approach would also have avoided the bane of many a comic-book adaptation: having to spend half your movie setting up the origin before you can get into the meat of the story. Comics these days typically solve the backstory problem by including a brief "what you need to know" paragraph at the beginning of each issue. Why can't we get a cinematic equivalent?

Just as things were coming to a close for the weekend last Friday, Columbia Pictures released the first poster for The Amazing Spider-Man. Featuring a wall-crawling Andrew Garfield, the one-sheet was interesting not only because of its tagline (which got more than a few people riled up) but because of its color scheme, using primarily black, gray and white to show off the film's darker tone. Now some international banners for the film have arrived online and the difference is pretty remarkable.

Check out the three banners below and head over to Comic Book Movie to see them full size.

This is much more in-line with the Spider-Man I know and love. While there have always been dark parts in Peter Parker's story - it is his Uncle Ben's death that eventually leads him to life as a vigilante - he has always been a fun-loving character who regularly makes quips and jokes while fighting the forces of evil. Hopefully that comes through in the final film.

A reboot of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, the new film from director Marc Webb finds Andrew Garfield as the new webhead and revisits the origin story while also featuring the character's first on-screen battle with The Lizard. Also in the film is Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Martin Sheen, Sally Field, Denis Leary, Julianne Nicholson, Campbell Scott and Irrfan Khan. The movie will hit theaters on July 3, 2012. To learn and see more from the film, including promo shots and the first trailer, be sure to head over to our Blend Film Database.