One week after he auditioned with a half a dozen of his peers, fairly inexperienced British actor Andrew Garfield, 27, has been cast as Peter Parker in the new Marc Webb directed Spider-Man 3D reboot. Sony have officially announced the casting, and the guy who showed some real chops and emotional maturity in Boy A and also in the Red Riding Trilogy will be your new Spider-Man. Wait, wait... he's 27? Wasn't the whole idea of this reboot to go for a teenage Peter Parker who could be transported back to high-school, and struggle with teenage problems? As per Sony's original press release back in January, just as the corpse of Raimi/Maguire's Spider-Man 4 was still warm; "...moving forward with a film based on a script by James Vanderbilt that focuses on a teenager grappling with both contemporary human problems and amazing super-human crises". 27? Tobey Maguire himself only turned 35 last week, and he was 25/26 when he was originally cast in 2000, even younger than Garfield. Genuinely, I'm completetly stunned by this. All the other actors who auditioned were teenagers, which was previously why I hadn't given Garfield much of a chance to land the role and now you have to wonder if in three movies down the line, we will be getting another reboot? AICN have a video of Garfield being introduced by Sony as the new Peter Parker. Drew McWeeny has heard that James Vanderbilt's (Zodiac) script now shifts Peter Parker from High School to College, which is fine and something I much prefer but isn't it difficult for us to get too much invested into this franchise knowing that we may not be in it for the long term? Despite his age, Garfield has only been acting for five years. Beginning on U.K. T.V. (that lesbian show Sugar Rush) before eventually getting some good exposure as Eddie in the Red Riding trilogy and leading Boy A - Garfield has found himself suddenly in demand this year. He plays the second lead in David Fincher's upcoming The Social Network and most believe it's his turn in that movie which has impressed Sony execs. More recently had been offered the role of Angel in the X-Men: First Class prequel, a role he will now have to turn down. Deadline say Garfield will earn $500,000 salary on the first film, $1 million for the second one, and $2 million for the third film, which is considerably less than what it would have cost Sony to bring back Raimi/Maguire. i.e. - one of the main reasons this whole reboot is happening anyway. Ironically, Michael Fassbender did the reverse last month when he turned down the villain role in the new Spider-Man reboot to play Magneto and you know, I just wonder if Aaron Johnson is going to have to make a similar kind of decision. The Kick-Ass actor is perfect for Harry Osbourne and I just wonder if after his screentest, Sony offer him that role which would conflict with him playing Cyclops for Matt Vaughn. The still untitled Spider-Man reboot begins filming in December, and will be released July 2012. I would love to hear your thoughts about the casting, and your thoughts on the reboot in general.