Aided by her poaching of Variety’s star reporter Mike Fleming, Nikki Finke’s been all over this week’s huge “Spider-Man” story — she was the first to break the news of a delay in production on Sam Raimi’s version, and the first to report the complete reboot. Now, there’s news of a potential front-runner for director; “(500) Days of Summer” helmer Marc Webb.
There’s apparently a wish list of directors including James Cameron, David Fincher, and, strangely, Wes Anderson (part of us is dying to see a Wes Anderson “Spider-Man” movie, actually), but there’s little-to-no-chance of any of these guys taking the project on; they’re all too well-established, and would want too much creative control, although it’s at least encouraging that the list isn’t made up of studio lapdogs like Brett Ratner or McG. Deadline reports that Webb has already met with executives at Sony to talk about the project so he certainly seems to have a leg up on some of the other candidates – he’s been linked the project since it was announced (48 whole hours ago…).
We put Webb on our list of prospective directors for the project, and to reiterate what we said there, he’s visually inventive, and would clearly bring a fresher feel to the franchise. He’s also had some action experience in the music video world — witness (ideally, with the sound down, if you have any respect for your ears) his “Saving Private Ryan”-aping My Chemical Romance video below. James Vanderbilt’s script focuses on Peter Parker in high school, and Finke says that Sony like Webb because he’s “a director with a grasp of how to depict the way young people think and feel,” and it’s true that his debut had a more accurate view of early twentysomethings than most of its contemporaries.
He’s also not against taking on big projects — Rope of Silicon talked to him back when he was being linked to “The A-Team,” and he said then: “To me it doesn’t matter, blockbuster or small movie, that shouldn’t be the criteria. It’s whether it’s good or bad, because I think there are movies, like “Pirates of the Caribbean” — the first one — I thought was really an interesting movie about being true to your blood. It was saying very interesting things in a very pop way, and that I find very compelling. I’m a huge fan of popular movies if they’re done well and I think you can say a lot in those bigger movies and I think independent cinema in the past few years has had a huge impact on the complexity of bigger movies. “The Dark Knight” is definitely a great example of that.”
It’s a very healthy attitude to take, suggesting that a Webb-directed “Spider-Man” isn’t going to be totally dumbed-down. As much as we like “(500) Days of Summer,” and we really do, it was a broader, more crowd-pleasing film than its Sundance credentials suggested (Exhibit A: the rather glib coda), and we reckon that Webb has always been destined to end up as a mainstream guy, rather than the next great auteur.
So, if this works out, and all the signs so far are that it will, we can definitely live with it, although Greg Mottolla or Ruben Fleischer would still be our picks. Things seem to be moving very quickly on this project, and we’d guess we’ll hear about a confirmed pick, Webb or otherwise, in a week or two.
BTW: some rumors say that Nimród Antal, who is currently directing “Predators” for Robert Rodriguez is Sony’s top choice. But after the bust that was “Armored” (and the vastly overrated “Vacancy”), we kind of doubt it. We would file under rumor for now and take it lightly at best. We would assume he has to prove himself with “Predators” again and we hope he does because his debut, “Kontroll,” was great.
