The ‘Spider-Man’ Director Shortlist Gets Whittled Down

Another month, another Spider-Man director shortlist. Shouldn’t these lists eventually yield a winner? At this rate, the new Spider-Man series from Sony and Marvel will open somewhere around May of 2051.

Last month, we learned that Sony and Marvel’s top picks for the coveted (and web-covered) director’s chair included Warm Bodies’ Jonathan Levine, St. Vincent’s Ted Melfi, Vacation’s John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein, Pitch Perfect’s Jason Moore, and Napoleon Dynamite’s Jared Hess. This month, Deadline says the contenders have been whittled down to just Melfi and Levine, although Daley and Goldstein are still in the running.

There’s no mention of Hess or Moore, but they’ve added another name to the mix: Jon Watts, “a top commercials guy who made his feature debut with Cop Car, a Kevin Bacon-starrer that debuted at Sundance.” Meanwhile, we still have no idea who will play Spidey; one recent report claimed Asa Butterfield had been cast as Peter Parker, but there’s been no official word, and Deadline claims he is just a “frontrunner” along with Tom Holland. Supposedly, the final decisions for both star and director rests in the hands of Sony’s Tom Rothman, Marvel’s Kevin Feige, and producer Amy Pascal.

Deadline says “this is all moving very quickly” but it sure doesn’t feel like it. If early July rolls around and there’s yet another slightly different shortlist with no director and no definitive Spidey in sight, I may start to lose it.