SPIDER-MAN moving forward'

Ya know... sometimes I can just tell that a lot of people are excited about a piece of news that hit the wires on a certain day. So far, I've received over 240 forwarded articles that came on the AP wire yesterday saying that SPIDER-MAN was free of legal hells, and was now ready to move forward. The subject lines I was getting were along the lines of, "Hip Hip HOORAY, Today's A Great Day" to "James Cameron is GO on SPIDER-MAN!!!" to "Spider-Man Set To Start Production!!!!" to "Big News On Web-Slinger!"...

Well... For everyone that's curious you can read about it over at Variety and read the whole scoop. BUT... well... There are all sorts of additional questions that this raises. First of all, there is the FACT that what was settled was the MGM/SONY/MARVEL arguement... but that this does not take care of the VIACOM suit which is still set to go to court soon. In addition... unless 20th Century Fox enters into a producing partnership on SPIDER-MAN with SONY Corp. then it is unlikely that James Cameron's SPIDER-MAN will see the light of day, and instead as Cinescape stated, there is the possibility that SPIDER-MAN may become an Emmerich and Devlin property. If Emmerich and Devlin are involved, then it is most probable that SPIDER-MAN is at least a year from production because it most likely would be the project after their PATRIOT which is allegedly set to begin production this year... barring additional wrangling.

So that basically brings us to... WHAT HAPPENED TODAY? Well, things are progressing, but if anything... what happened may have put an even larger gap between James Cameron and SPIDER-MAN.... The film is still in the air... Until the Viacom dispute is settled, and Marvel and Sony announce they have a script, director and lead actor.... Well, you'd be best off staring at the cobwebs in that corner of your room.

Personally... if I were Sony/AMY PASCAL... I'd be giving BILL MECHANIC a call, then giving our dear Mr Cameron a call. Because... well... isn't that what we all want to hear?