Tobey Maguire: Life after ‘Spider-Man’
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Steve Zeitchik at our new sister blog 24 Frames delves into the future for Tobey Maguire.
There’s been a lot of speculation about who might replace Tobey Maguire as the new Spider-Man (Joseph Gordon-Levitt seems like a no-brainer). But almost as interesting is what happens to the man who’s been playing him.
After all, Sam Raimi will go back to, one can assume (read: hope), the horror/suspense movies of earlier in his career (the rightly lauded ‘A Simple Plan’ and the underrated ‘The Gift,’ to name two). (At least we’re hoping he does; it’s likely he takes on the bigger-budget video-game adaptation ‘Warcraft’ first.) But Maguire poses a trickier question.
He’s been associated with -- and in some ways tethered to -- the ‘Spider-Man’ franchise for nearly a decade, and the scrapping of the superhero character opens up a new vein of possibility. The actor recently wrapped production on a dark comedy called ‘The Details.’ And of course he can be seen this awards season in the (tepidly reviewed) war movie ‘Brothers.’ With his ‘Spider-Man’ days over, does he continue in a more specialized direction or go back to the blockbuster?
There’s certainly no shortage of big vehicles he can sign on for. A while back, Sony was working on a sci-fi effects-fest called ‘Worlds,’ based on the art-heavy bestselling book by Alec Gillis, that was being developed with Maguire in mind. And there have been rumors of the sci-fi epic ‘Robotech’ and the Guillermo del Toro-directed ‘The Hobbit.’ Both would create Spidey-level fandom -- but, also, Spidey-level time commitments ... and not offer nearly as much character nuance.
THERE’S MORE, READ THE REST
-- Steven Zeitchik
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