Spidey gets a 'Batman,' 'Star Trek'-like re-boot

Ultimate Spider-Man (Courtesy:  IGN.com)

When you're out of ideas for your cash cow movie franchise and the budget and star salaries begin to climb into the stratosphere, there's only one thing to do:

Re-boot.

Perhaps using the "Batman" and "Star Trek" franchises as a model, Sony announced Tuesday that "(500) Days of Summer" helmer Marc Webb will hop in the director's chair for the next, reportedly scaled-down "Spider-Man" adventure.

Here it is again; the dreaded "re-imagined" project.  I must admit it worked well enough with "Batman" and "Star Trek."  But they both re-emerged on the movie franchise landscape with budgets worthy of the massive endeavors they had grown into.

According to Borys Kit, posting his Risky Business blog on the Hollywood Reporter Web site, the plan for the new "Spider-Man" is a budget "in the $80 million range and feature a cast of relative unknowns."

Sony, which scrapped the Sam Raimi/Tobey Maguire "Spider-Man 4" project just over a week ago, mentions nothing about scaling back or potential cast members in its official announcement.  Just kudos about Webb and the fact that the new thrust will take Peter Parker back to high school:

"We wanted someone who could capture the awe of being in Peter's shoes so the audience could experience his sense of discovery while giving real heart to the emotion, anxiety and recklessness of that age and coupling all of that with the adrenaline of Spider-Man's adventure."

Kit's Hollywood Reporter article says "the touchstone for the new movie will not be the 1960s comics, which were the inspiration behind the movies by Raimi."  This time, the bedrock of the Spidey stories will be inspired by the "Ultimate Spider-Man" comics of the past decade.

No matter how Webb's vision turns out, this about-face in the "Spider-Man" movie franchise will delay the next flick a year.  Raimi was struggling to get his third sequel into theaters next summer.

The "Spider-Man Whatever" re-boot isn't scheduled to hit movie screens until the summer of 2012.