According to Mike Fleming - sitting pretty at the top of the wish-list of wanted directors for Sony's Spider-Man reboot is Marc Webb, the director of this summer's slick Indie rom-com 500 Days of Summer - a smart love story that connected with a young adult audience. It was fun, quirky, highly original and full of life and you can see why he has attracted the attention of Sony with what they are planning with a Spidey reboot. As Fleming says...
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What has Sony execs excited is the fact that (500) Days of Summer introduced a director with a grasp of how to depict the way young people think and feel. This is critical because the Jamie Vanderbilt script covers the formative years of a high school-aged Peter Parker, and that POV is as important as the action sequences.
Webb's a smart guy and he's got a deft handling of direction but well it's one thing to go from helming a rom-com to a big budget, studio action spectacular like a Spider-Man movie. My spidey sense tingles at the thought that not only will he have to learn his first action sequence, but he'll be learning how to shoot in 3-D, he'll be learning how to work within a strict studio environment and with a rabid fanboy expectation, as us internet and comic con folk watch over his every decision. That's a lot to put on a guy's shoulder for only his second movie. But the choice from Sony is hardly surprising. Webb will be significantly cheaper than Raimi, he'll be more of a 'yes man' because he will be grateful to be in the position he's in, and he won't question when Sony want him to do as many scenes of unrequited teen love, as they do web-slinging.
Deadline say that the rest of the directors shortlist are made up of auteurs, but as Webb's name stands-out so much from this bunch - I can't imagine that this is nothing more than a hypothetical list from Sony. It's probably a list they drafted and said right, well we'll have one of these three guys if they are willing to take a major pay-cut, if they understand where we are coming from in terms of character, and if they are willing to work to our guidelines, and shoot the movie quickly. It's likely that Sony had nothing more than a brief conversation with the following three, and if it got as far as an offer, they probably told the studio where to go...
James Cameron (Avatar, Terminator 1 & 2) - and who tried for years to get his Spider-Man pitch off the ground in the '90s. David Fincher(Zodiac, Se7en) - was runner-up to Sam Raimi in the potential directing stakes when Sony were making the first Spidey movie ten years ago. Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenabaums) - never been a fan of the guy, and it's hard to imagine what a Spidey movie would be like from him.