“I’m available,” said Topher Grace to everything.

Since The Amazing Spider-Man 2 started filming in New York City earlier this week, director Marc “Charlotte’s” Webb has been treating his Twitter followers to one photo from the set each day. So far he’s Tweeted pictures of the set and green screen, crew members and one prop that featured the word “OSCORP”.

On Wednesday, though, Webb spiked the nerd punch with a Tweet that featured a very obvious reference, at least to serious Spidey fanatics. Basically, he told us that Venom will have something to do with the sequel without actually telling us that Venom will have something to do with it. So sneaky, that Marc Webb.

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"Awesome, the Sinister Six!" - Maybe one person

The guys at Super Hero Hype recently spoke with Matt Tolmach and Avi Arad, the producers of The Amazing Spider-Man, and they offered a lot of insight as to why Sony Pictures was willing to re-launch the Spider-Man franchise so soon, with Spider-Man 3 still freshly splitting our memories into three parts and pooping in each one accordingly. You know, aside from that whole “they had to or Marvel would reclaim it” reason.

Beyond a lot of the back-patting and Sam Raimi/Marc Webb mutual praise, the duo admitted that Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man would indeed get at least the same trilogy treatment as the Tobey Maguire version, if not more. So the question, then, would be – who will the other villains be? Well, it seems they may or may not have learned a very important lesson from the aforementioned third installment.

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The word around the campfire today is that Sony is developing a Venom movie as a Spider-Man 3 spinoff.  Venom, who was played by Topher Grace and was such an interesting part of Spider-Man 3 that I didn’t even remember it, actually died in the movie.  But that hardly matters.  As Rob Lowe’s character says in Thank You for Smoking, “So what?  That’s one line of dialog.  ‘Thank god we invented the… you know, whatever device.’”

Gary Ross [Pleasantville, Seabiscuit] is writing “Venom” as a potential directing vehicle. Ross is already writing “Spider-Man 4” for the studio.  In the comics, Venom is a gooey alien parasite that bonds with Peter Parker and later his newsroom rival, among other people, becoming one of more popular villains in “Spider-Man’s” rogue gallery.  Topher Grace portrayed the character in the 2007 movie, which ended with both the human and the alien symbiote apparently destroyed in an explosion. [Variety]

So… am I supposed to be more or less excited about this than about Spider-Man 4?  Because I gotta tell you, I’m feelin pretty shrugswardly about both of them.  And I should be the target audience.  I’m not even the kind of guy who (*air quotes*) had sex with (*air quotes*) girls in (*air quotes*) high school.

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