James Vanderbilt Writing 'Spider-Man 5' and '6'

Even though his script for Spider-Man 4 was later revised and that revision also went under the knife, James Vanderbilt has been hired to write Spider-Man 5 and 6, which presumably would keep Tobey Maguire locked in a state of arrested development as a college-aged freelance photographer until he's 40.

Vanderbilt, whose adaptation of Zodiac rightly received an Oscar nomination, was the original writer for the upcoming Spidey flick, due in May 2011. And even though production on that film hasn't commenced, Marvel and Sony are pushing ahead with the two films that follow it, which reportedly have an interconnecting storyline. Of course, at a very basic level, they all do, don't they?

So how did a guy whose work wasn't good enough for the fourth film manage to to snag the next two? Well, apparently, Sam Raimi wasn't in love with Vanderbilt's draft for Spider-Man 4, so he passed it along to David Lindsay-Abaire. Now Gary Ross (Seabiscuit, Pleasantville) is reworking that version of the screenplay. Sony, however, did like where Vanderbilt was headed, and welcomed him back to the franchise to essentially be the writer of record for the second half of the Spidey arc.