As far as inevitable sequels go, you don’t get much more foregone of a conclusion than a follow up to Sony’s reboot of The Amazing Spider-man, which was already shopped out to the Blockbuster Bang Bro’s themselves, Orci and Kurtzman, before the reboot even made it to theaters. And while the movie is a (performances aside) top-to-bottom stinker that never seemed to capture the zeitgeist in a real way, it’s still already made a ton of money and will continue along, if only by habit.
Interestingly though, Columbia Chief is already planting warning that the franchise may move on without director Marc Webb if his obligations to Fox rear their head. You see, the director is contractually obligated to make a movie with Fox due to their involvement with 500 Days Of Summer, and they may draw him back to direct Age Of Rage exactly when Sony needs to get Spidey going again to make his 2014 sequel date. Frankly, Webb’s story of a virus that leaves the world with no adults (kind of an inverse Children of Men) sounds much more likely to result in something interesting than any Spider-Man sequel, so I do hope the chips fall in that direction.
In any event, it is this complication that Doug Belgrad refers to when he says Sony would like Webb involved with the next film, but that there are “obstacles.” (Pronounced “ob-STACK-uls.”)
The studio’s dissatisfaction with the reboot and rumors of the film being sliced to ribbons due to poor effects work and incoherent character arcs notwithstanding, it sounds like pure logistics will give Sony an easy out on finding someone new.
Anybody you’d like to see hop in the chair and grab the megaphone?