Spider-Man on the Cheap

More details are starting to come out about the upcoming Spider-Man reboot, now confirmed as being helmed by (500) Days of Summer director, Marc Webb. Casting rumors are flying around, aided and abetted in small part by yours truly(Joseph Gordon-Leavitt FTW!!), but as of now nothing is in place.

What can be confirmed, via THR, is that Sony is looking at a slim downed budget of $80M. And as if to stick a web ball in the eye of guys like me, the plan is to go with cast of unknowns, as an extreme counter to the high priced Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, etc. of the previous franchise. Both Maguire and director Sam Raimi were clocking in at a pretty nice percentage of the films' grosses on top of their huge salaries, a demand that a relative upstart like Marc Webb does not come attached with.

As things stand right now, the blueprint for the next wave of films will be based heavily on the Ultimate Spider-Man series written by Brian Michael Bendis as part of Marvel's Ultimate line of comics. Those stories focus more on a young, high school aged Peter Parker, dealing with social and relationship issues moreso than the villain-of-the-week.

Ok, while I'm happy that a structure is in place, I'm not too fond of this CW/ABC Family take on Spider-Man. It's one of the reasons why I never read Ultimate Spider-Man past the first couple of issues. The budgetary issue makes sense, and is probably the chief reason why Raimi and Co. aren't returning. I wish more studios would chop down their budgets like this, as long as it doesn't effect the story quality in any noticeable way.