New York: On a weekend in January of 2010, Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios pivoted faster than even Spider-Man would dare.
A fourth installment of the hugely popular Spider-Man franchise was planned, with director Sam Raimi and star Tobey Maguire returning to their trilogy of films that had earned more than $2.5 billion at the global box office and generally been hailed as a standard-bearer in big-screen comic book adaptations.
But by that Monday, Raimi's dissatisfaction with the script and the producers' eagerness for a new movie had come to a head. In a flash, the sequel was kaput, and a reboot was ordered up. Next Tuesday, The Amazing Spider-Man will be released, charting a new start for the web-slinger just five years after Spider-Man 3.
Reboots of film franchises have been typically launched many more years later than that. But today, "five years is a lifetime in the movie business," says Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal. "I wasn't troubled by it."...
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04:54 PM, Jun 28, 2012
