Even as plans for Spider-Man 90210 are progressing, the key question remains to be answered: just which snot-nosed Hollywood “It” kid will end up playing the rebooted Parker youngster? THR.com’s Heat Vision has put together what they consider to be the go-to list of possible candidates with whom director Marc Webb has been meeting and/or considering. These include the following:
Jamie Bell: 24, English actor, made his film debut playing the title character in Billy Elliot. Credits include Nicholas Nickleby and Jane Eyre, King Kong and Ed Zwick’s Defiance. More important, he’s already stepped into the comics world by portraying Tintin in Jackson and Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin movie, which won’t hit screens until December 2011.
Alden Ehrenreich: The Los Angeles-born 20-year-old has a juicy backstory, having been “discovered” by Spielberg, who saw a comedy video starring Ehrenreich at a bat mitzvah of his daughter’s friend. A couple of TV appearances followed, but the actor’s next big leap came when he was cast by Francis Ford Coppola in 2009’s Tetro.
Frank Dillane: The 19-year-old Brit’s main credit is last year’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, where he played a young Tom Riddle.
Andrew Garfield: L.A.-born actor. Credits include BBC TV series, Sugar Rush, playing a young reporter in a gritty British TV movie trilogy, Red Riding. The 27-year-old appeared in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and will be seen in David Fincher’s movie about Facebook, The Social Network.
Josh_Hutcherson: Turns 18 this year, from Kentucky. Credits include Zathura, Bridge to Terabithia and the upcoming Red Dawn remake. He appears in the Sundance hit The Kids Are All Right, which insider buzz suggests could be an Oscar contender, and starred with Brendan Fraser in Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Webb looks to be going with relative unknowns in the film, which will deal with an angst-ridden (of course) teen Parker dealing with guilt over knowing he had the power to stop his Uncle Ben’s murder. So be it. I’m over the spilled milk of knowing where this franchise – of my all-time favorite superhero by the way – could and should have gone after the genius of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2. I wonder if it’s too late to make a deal with Mephisto to get things back on track…