Rumoured director Marc Webb will direct Sony’s reboot of the Spider-Man franchise.

Three times.

NYMag says:

Webb, whose (500) Days scored a Golden Globe nomination and whose name seems to have predestined him for this job, has long been a favorite of Columbia chairman Amy Pascal. We’re told that last year she very nearly hired him to direct the adaptation of Michael Lewis’s Moneyball after she pulled the plug on Steven Soderbergh three days before shooting. She ultimately chose Bennett Miller (Capote), thinking that Moneyball might be hurt by Webb’s whimsical style, but she views him as a latter-day Cameron Crowe for the economically and socially angsty Generation Y, and thinks he’d be perfect to explore the conflict within Parker.

The press release continues to illustrate how much they are paying Webb ($10m per film with bonus for hitting boxoffice milestones) instead of the percentage of the take like Raimi had. Maybe part of the falling out was that Sony was tired of Raimi and Maguire making so much money. It was reported that between the two of them, Spider-man 4 was going to owe them 25% of the rake.

It was also pointed out that ironicly the Agency that negotiated Webb’s deal and got him the coveted comfy chair was the same agency that pushed to get Maguire the role of Spidey himself.

I don’t mind Webb as a director for the social elements of Spiderman - that much we know he is capable of handling. But I wish they hired a director with some notion that he can handle the wit and action of a comedic comic book character.