As rumored earlier this week, Sony has hired 500 Days of Summer‘s Marc Webb to direct the reboot of Spider-Man, and they’ve made it official with a press release. Webb is a 34-year-old former music video director, 500 Days was his feature debut. Right now he’s working from a script by James Vanderbilt (Basic, Zodiac), but don’t be surprised if they bring in a few more writers before it’s done.

Webb comes much cheaper for the studio and is locked down for only one pic. Deal being negotiated includes options for more pics — fairly standard on a franchise.  [Variety]

The plan for the movie is to be in the $80 million range and feature a cast of relative unknowns (so you can quash those Rob Pattinson or Gordon-Levitt rumors at this point). And the story will be pared down to center on a high school kid who is dealing with the knowledge that his uncle died even though the teen had the power to stop it. [THR]

“We wanted someone who could capture the awe of being in Peter’s shoes so the audience could experience his sense of discovery while giving real heart to the emotion, anxiety, and recklessness of that age…” -Sony’s Amy Pascal, from the press release.

Considering Spider-Man 2 cost upwards of $200 million, $80 million is nothing.  So it’s almost certainly not going to be in 3-D, and will be more Smallville than Superman Returns.  It’s going to star some wiener face who’s the next Zac Efron or Taylor Lautner, and of course, it’s an origin story.  Basically, Sony is making the Jon Voight’s nutsack of Spider-Man movies.  To paraphrase Patton Oswalt on origin stories, “Hey, do you love Angelina Jolie? Does she give you a big boner? Well then here’s Jon Voight’s ballsack!”

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At this rate my next headline will just be “PENIS PENIS VAGINA.”  Anyway, looks like Brad Pitt/Steven Soderbergh’s adaptation of Moneyball, which Sony head Amy Pascal shelved three days before it was supposed to start shooting, will be moving forward without Steven Soderbergh.  Pascal reportedly didn’t like Soderbergh’s idea to shoot documentary-style recreations of events from the non-fiction book using the real people involved.  Aaron Sorkin (your parents’ Joss Whedon) has been hired to do a re-write.

The writer has been brought on to do a draft of the baseball drama, drawing on Steve Zaillian’s earlier take. The studio wants to move forward quickly with the new iteration, with Sorkin set to turn in his version as soon as next month. [THR]

It sounded like Steven Soderbergh had an idea to try something different, rather than going the usual studio route of trying to crowbar non-fiction reporting into a conventional narrative, a lá Fast Food Nation, and it sucks that we’ll never get to see it.  But when it comes right down to it, this is still a book about baseball stats, which is right up there with Jon and Kate and American Idol on my list of things I absolutely, positively couldn’t give less of a sh-t about.

Sony head Amy Pascal reportedly pulled the plug on Steven Soderbergh’s adaptation of Michael Lewis’ Moneyball (starring Brad Pitt) three days before filming was set to start. That allowed the filmmakers to court other studios.  Long story short, everyone passed.

Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures, which were offered a chance to pick up the project from Sony, have also passed because of concerns about its high budget [$57 million] and limited commercial appeal. “Moneyball” is now back in Sony’s hands, where the director will either have to make changes or the project will die and the studio will absorb nearly $10 million it already spent on development and pre-production.

According to a person close to the situation, Pascal met with Soderbergh to see if he was willing to revise his take, but the two couldn’t agree on a vision for the film. They also disagreed over Soderbergh’s plan to shoot the film in a more improvisational documentary style. She allowed “Moneyball’s” creative team to pitch the movie to Paramount and Warner Bros., where Pitt and Soderbergh have close ties. [LA Times via Playlist]

Meanwhile, some people are saying it was actually Pitt who didn’t like the script and Pascal just covered for him.

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You’d think if you’re Brad Pitt and Steven Soderbergh, you’d have earned a bit creative freedom by now.  Which is why it’s surprising that Sony has pulled the plug on their adaptation of Moneyball just a few days before it was supposed to begin filming.

On Friday, Columbia Pictures [owned by Sony] topper Amy Pascal placed the picture into “limited turnaround,” giving the filmmaker the chance to set it up at another studio.  The move came after Pascal read a rewrite that Soderbergh did to Steven Zaillian’s script and found it very different from the earlier scripts she championed. Pascal was uncomfortable enough with how the vision had changed that she applied the brakes. [Variety]

It seems like a strange decision given that Brad Pitt movies almost always do well.  David Poland has a nice breakdown of the math involved, including:

Sony eats $15 million to $20 million on the movie if they shut it down. It will never come back to life, most likely, but if it does, not a dollar they spent aside from the book buy will go towards the film itself.

(Variety again) Even in the climate of heightened studio caution, the turnaround news on “Moneyball” is surprising given that the project had reached the equivalent of third base [fingering Amy Pascal's vagina]. It was just 96 hours before the participants were ready to take the field, following three months of prep and with camera tests completed and cast and budget in place.

Sony is still nervous about Taking of Pelham 123 and Year One earning out, so if you ask me, this is probably just a case of closing the gate after the horse is gone or some other folksy expression.