Chris Evans Gets ‘Gifted’ for ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ Director’s Next Film

Since Sony partnered with Marvel for another Spider-Man reboot, Amazing Spider-Man director Marc Webb has been free to pursue other projects. In addition to producing the Limitless TV series for CBS, Webb has lined up a couple of new films: Gifted and The Only Living Boy in New York. The director will team-up with another superhero star for the former, while a couple of excellent actors have joined Miles Teller in the latter.

First up, Deadline reports that Chris Evans has signed on to lead the cast of Gifted, a drama based on Tom Flynn’s script that landed on the Black List. Evans will play a man who sues his mother for custody of his gifted seven-year-old niece following the tragic death of his sister.

After Gifted, Webb is set to direct The Only Living Boy in New York, a project he’s been developing for several years from a screenplay by Allan Loeb. Miles Teller has been attached to the leading role for a while, with Deadline reporting that Jeff Bridges and Rosamund Pike have joined the cast. The film centers on a college graduate who discovers that his father has been having an affair with a younger woman — as he attempts to end their affair, the young man finds himself unwittingly falling for his father’s lover.

I’m more excited to see what Webb does now that he’s free from his superhero movie obligations — he made quite an impression with his debut feature, 500 Days of Summer, which made his work on the Amazing Spider-Man films even more puzzling. In recent years, studios have been looking to indie films for potential directors for their blockbuster projects. As was the case with Webb, this doesn’t always work out, but the upside is that we’ll have two new, original features from him fairly soon.