Okay, before you shoot your load thinking this is some unbelievable Spidey 4 news, it ain’t. Rather, Variety has news that Tobey Maguire has recently signed on to star in and produce The Limit, a biopic on Grand Prix racer Phil Hill for Columbia Pictures. Scribe Tony Peckham (Sherlock Holmes) will adapt the forthcoming Michael Cannell novel for Maguire Entertainment, which Jenno Topping (Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle) will produce.
The story will center around Hill and good friend, Wolfgang von Trips, both Ferrari teammates who competed against each other in the 1961 World Drivers Championship, which was won by Hill, the only American ever to do so. Hill also won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1958 and again in 1961 and 1962. Hill died in 2008 after complications from Parkinsons. Cathy Schulman and Scarlett Lacey will also be producing for Mandalay Pictures.
Maguire is next set to star in Jim Sheridan’s Brothers with Natalie Portman and his erstwhile replacement on the web, Jake Gyllenhaal; as well as Spider-Man 4 in 2011 and Gary Ross’ The Crusaders next year.
On a side note, with all things being equal, consider this possibility for Spidey 4: Hard up for cash as usual, Peter reluctantly accepts an offer from GM, who, being in financial straits of their own, contract with Webhead to create a green vehicle. Chris Evans cameo as the torch and an Act 2 montage in the Baxter Building auto shop and thus the following scene:
Say then that we get Terence Stamp as the Tinkerer. He gets his hands on the Spider-Mobile to battle our hero. A climactic CGI battle between Spidey and a possessed offroad supervehicle on the side of the Empire Sate Building and we’re golden. You’ve got product placement for a new GM dune buggy and a plot that at the very worst couldn’t be much worse than Spidey 3.