We're still over a year away from Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man, but Sony knows that the best way to kick off a sequel is to make sure you have a script ready to go.  With that in mind, they've hired The Amazing Spider-Man screenwriter James Vanderbilt to start work on a sequel.  Heat Vision reports that Vanderbilt outlined his take for the sequel to studio execs yesterday and received the go-ahead to start work on the script.  Of course, there's no guarantee that Sony will use Vanderbilt's script, especially if their upcoming 3D Spider-Man reboot tanks.  But the studio clearly has a lot of faith in the screenwriter whose past credits include Zodiac and The Rundown.  Not only did he write Amazing Spider-Man, he also worked on Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 4 before the studio decided the project was taking too long to go into production and it was better to start from scratch.

There's no word on what the sequel will be about (we're still not even sure what The Amazing Spider-Man is about), but hit the jump for some of my amazing speculation.  The Amazing Spider-Man stars Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, and Rhys Ifans.  It's due out July 3, 2012.

It will be interesting to see how much of the sequel's groundwork has been laid in The Amazing Spider-Man.  Recently we've seen a trend of superhero movies leaving their larger villains for the second movie.  Sherlock Holmes set-up Moriarty for the second movie, and while Sinestro is being introduced in Green Lantern, it's widely assumed he'll be the villain if Warner Bros. goes ahead with Green Lantern 2.  Will The Amazing Spider-Man 2 bring in Green Goblin?  Or will they go with a villain we haven't seen previously seen in the movies like Mysterio or Vulture?  And then there's the question of Mary Jane.  Fans were surprised to learn that the red-headed Stone would actually be playing blonde love-interest Gwen Stacy and that Mary Jane would be absent from the reboot.  Will the sequel leave the character our and forge a new path with Gwen Stacy as the constant love-interest?  What's great about all these speculative questions is that they'll be equally valid a year from now when we still know nothing about this sequel.