Production hasn’t even started on Spider-Man 4 yet, and Sony has already hired a writer for Spider-Man 5 and Spider-Man 6. The lucky pen jockey of the future is James Vanderbilt, the man who did the first draft of Spider-Man 4, even though that first draft was later rewritten by David Lindsay-Abaire and Gary Ross. Director Sam Raimi apparently wasn’t on board the Vanderbilt train when it came to the new plot direction Spider-Man was going to take, but the higher ups at Marvel and Columbia Pictures seem to be. It has not yet been announced whether the rest of Spider-Man’s key players, such as Raimi, Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, will remain on for Spider-Man 5 and Spider-Man 6, but the studio seems prepared to take the whole franchise in the reboot direction if need be. [Variety]

Related posts on 30ninjas.com:

• Spider-Man Rebooting in 2012
• Raimi’s New Approach to Spider-Man 4
• Spider-Man 4 Gets Yet Another Re-write
• Bruce Campbell Gets a Bigger Part in Spider-Man 4
• Spider-Man Is the Next Dark Knight
• Spider-Man 4′s Villain, Second Puberty