I was happy about the reboot. A new cast, the old one sucked. A new story, the other was painted into a corner without a lot of room to move. A whole new Spidey, but now…Someone had to throw out the word Gritty. Do we really need another dark realistic superhero?? This is from Entertainment Weekly, and I hope its speculation and not fact.

The next Spider-Man film will be a reboot of the franchise, not a continuation of series Sam Raimi created back in 2002 — in a move similar to Batman Begins restarting the Batman franchise seven years after Batman and Robin underwhelmed fans and critics.

This time around, the series will place Peter Parker in a more contemporary setting, as a teenager battling today’s issues. The decision to go with an origin story stemmed from Sony developing two Spidey projects simultaneously. According to studio insiders, Sony was working on both Raimi’s Spider-Man 4 and the new origin story from James Vanderbilt, who wrote Zodiac. The original plan was to keep the Spider-Man gang together for one last film in 2011 before rebooting the series in 2012. When it became clear that Raimi would not be able to make the summer 2011 release date planned for Spider-Man 4, the studio opted to scrap Spider-Man 4 altogether, and focus solely on the series reboot.

Who will helm the new film is anyone’s guess but with the studio interested in a more gritty, contemporary redo of the series, they are certainly focused on younger directors making waves in Hollywood. One name that has popped up is Marc Webb, the man behind (500) Day of Summer. He was previously in discussions with the studio to take over Moneyball, but that job went to Bennett Miller. Michael Bay has also previously expressed interest in taking over the Spider-Man franchise and Seabiscuit director Gary Ross worked on one of the drafts of Spider-Man 4 and is said to be a huge fan of the comic book series.

I swear to Robot Jesus that if Michael Bay takes over Spider-Man I will start an organization dedicated to his downfall.