Marc Webb was highly regarded in the music video world when he made his feature directorial debut with 2009’s swell romantic comedy/drama (500) Days of Summer. The sweet and uniquely told indie was a massive success, and Webb showed tremendous promise as a filmmaker—so much so that Sony then hired him to reboot the Spider-Man franchise. Since that time, though, Summer remains the only non-Spider-Man movie under Webb’s belt, as he went right into directing The Amazing Spider-Man 2 after the first Spidey pic. The plan was for Webb to also move right into directing The Amazing Spider-Man 3 after the second film in order to stay on schedule, but after the critical and commercial disappointment of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Sony has opted to push back Spider-Man 3 and move forward with The Sinister Six first instead.
Which brings us to today’s promising news regarding Webb’s next directorial effort. With The Amazing Spider-Man 3 postponed (or possibly canceled altogether), Webb is now eyeing two smaller pictures for his next project, and he’s landed a rather talented young individual to lead one of them: Miles Teller. More after the jump.
Webb has been attached to direct the indie drama The Only Living Boy in New York for quite a while now, but his Spider-Man commitments put the project on hold. With Spidey out of the picture for the near future, Variety reports that Miles Teller is now in talks to star in The Only Living Boy in New York, which is looking like it might just be Webb’s next film.
Written by Allan Loeb (21, The Dilemma), the drama is described as a twisted coming of age tale in which a young man learns that his overbearing father is having an affair. The son tries to stop it, but ends up becoming involved with the woman as well. This is certainly more dramatic material than Webb has handled before, but the relationship-centric scenes in his Spider-Man films were far and away the best parts of those movies, and (500) Days of Summer also proved he has strong chops when it comes to character.
Webb is apparently weighing either The Only Living Boy in New York or the Fox Searchlight drama The Gifted as his next film, but with Teller becoming attached to New York, it now seems likely it will go first.
Teller is coming off strong buzz for his intense performance in the Sundance drama Whiplash as well as last year’s The Spectacular Now, and he’s also poised to break out in the commercial realm with a starring role in next summer’s The Fantastic Four. He recently wrapped the Divergent sequel Insurgent, and is currently gearing up to shoot the boxing drama Bleed for This, after which he will reteam with his Whiplash director Damien Chazelle for the musical La La Land early next year. It’s unclear where New York fits into this, but I imagine production could begin sometime next spring.
