If you were a fan of “The Amazing Spider-Man,” then you’re probably pretty excited about the official news today that Marc Webb is now officially onboard to return for “The Amazing Spider-Man” sequel, along with Andrew Garfield.
The press release sent out this morning by Columbia Pictures also confirmed that Andrew Garfield will return as Peter Parker and Spider-Man and Emma Stone is in talks right now to come back as Gwen Stacy. I don’t think anyone should be particularly shocked by any of this news. The first movie did very well, so of course they’re bringing back as many of the creative elements as they can.
James Vanderbilt wrote the first draft of the script, with revisions by Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci and Jeff Pinkner, and so far, we have no concrete information about what they’ll be doing in the film. If they announce the Green Goblin as the villain for this one, then it’s pretty much a sure bet we can start preparing our farewells for Stone.
Columbia president Doug Belgrad commented on the sequel in the press release, saying, “We could not be more confident in the direction we are taking this new Spider-Man storyline and we are tremendously excited to be ramping up production again with Marc at the helm and Andrew continuing on as Peter Parker.” They’ve got a little under two years to get the film ready for release, so my guess is they’ll be shooting sooner rather than later.
There were a number of stories I heard during the production of the picture about how difficult things were for Webb on the first film, and if I’d laid a bet on whether or not he would return to the series, I would have lost. Webb’s facing a telescoped production process again this time, with the release date already set, and no matter how much he learned on that first film, this is going to be a race to the finish line.
“The Amazing Spider-Man 2” will be in theaters May 2, 2014.