Sony’s Spider-Man short list includes Pitch Perfect, 50/50, Napoleon Dynamite directors
Spider-Man is coming back, for the second time. (Or maybe the third? It’s easy to lose count.) Anyway, Sony is looking for a new director for the latest entry in its Spider-Man franchise, its first with Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige. According to Deadline, the company’s short list includes—but is not necessarily exclusive to—Jonathan Levine, director of 50/50 and the zombie comedy Warm Bodies; John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein, the writer/directors of the upcoming National Lampoon’s Vacation reboot; Ted Melfi, director of the Golden Globe-nominated St. Vincent; Pitch Perfect director Jason Moore; and Jared Hess, best known for Napoleon Dynamite.
According to producers Feige and Amy Pascal, the new film will be part one of what they hope will grow into a three- or four-part series, with each film covering a year in Peter Parker’s high school life. Deadline says that the studio is going for a “John Hughes humor and emotion” vibe, “plus all the superhero stuff.”(Let’s imagine the Avengers in detention on a Saturday afternoon, just for a minute.) In one of Sony’s better ideas for the franchise, the film will not be an origin story; producers have apparently realized that anyone who has seen a Spider-Man cartoon, read a Spider-Man comic book, or saw any of Sony’s other five web-slinger movies have a pretty good handle on how Peter Parker became your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
Sony is still on the hunt for a fresh-faced young nerd to portray Peter Parker in the new series. The casting of Peter Parker could happen before a director for the new Spider-Man movie is chosen, as the character will probably appear in Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War.