In what could be seen as supreme faith in the upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man (or at least its ability to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in profit), Sony Pictures has tapped Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman to write a screenplay for The Amazing Spider-Man 2. This, despite the fact that the first film has yet to debut, and is slated to appear in a summer film season likely to be dominated by two other guaranteed blockbuster smash hit comic book properties, namely: The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises.
If the names Orci and Kurtzman sound familiar to you, there’s a very good reason for that. These two gents have been responsible for a huge number of Hollywood’s biggest summer blockbusters of the past decade. Listing all of their writing credits would turn this news post into an overlong bullet-point cavalcade of films you’re likely already very familiar with. In short, these are the guys who wrote the scripts for the 2009 Star Trek reboot (and its upcoming sequel), Mission Impossible III, the first two Transformers films, Cowboys & Aliens and the modern cult classic TV series Alias.
Granted, the quality of their output is debatable, but you can’t deny that scripts featuring an Orci and Kurtzman byline almost always pull in massive profits. Thus, it’s not terribly surprising to see Sony tap the duo for the next Spider-Man film.
Or, as The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision blog puts it, “Bringing in the duo highlights the premium importance the studio is putting on the sequel. The hiring of the high-profile writers is not cheap, and it shows that Sony does not want to lose any momentum on the project.”
“Alex and Bob have a unique ability to write great character and spectacular action that makes them pitch perfect for Spider-Man,” says producer Matt Tolmach.
Despite the film’s nascent status and the fact that we’re a long ways away from its debut, Sony Pictures has attached a May 2, 2014 release date to the flick. That gives us almost exactly two years to speculate on how exactly this film will be awesome/horribly embarrassing. Our guess? Jack Black as a wacky, hyper-flatulent, slapstick version of The Rhino.
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