- guardian.co.uk,
- Thursday February 03 2000 12:26 GMT
The role of student-superhero Peter Parker in the forthcoming Spiderman project looks to have been finally narrowed down to a shortlist of three.
According to Entertainment Weekly, an unnamed source at Columbia studios has revealed that the leading candidates are Jude Law, Leonardo DiCaprio and Freddie Prinze Jr. DiCaprio's representative - the splendidly named Ken Sunshine - would neither deny nor confirm the rumour, but a spokesman for Law admitted to the magazine that Columbia had already approached the actor. "There have been overtures about it," the spokesman says. "Jude has been a Spiderman fanatic since he was a kid."
The news is just the latest twist in a behind-the-scenes drama that is likely to be more absorbing than anything that eventually makes it onto the screen. Columbia's adaptation of the classic Marvel comic book yarn has been plagued by problems from the start. Hasty script rewrites have been commisioned to appease dissatisfied Marvel executives. Meanwhile the director's hat has been passed variously between James Cameron, David Fincher and Jan de Bont before settling firmly and finally on the head of Sam Raimi two weeks ago. Movie fans and comic-book afficionados have been following the developments with a nerdy relish, on a website (www.spidermanhype.com) dedicated to documenting every twist in the Spiderman tale.
• Columbia has confirmed that the picture will begin shooting in November or December with a view to an American release in the autumn of 2001.
