Nearly a year in advance of the film's release, the makers of Spider-man 3 are going viral.
Apprehending the interactive powers of the blogosphere, last week Sony set up an "official blog" for the third film in the fabulously successful series. 
And, tapping into the root source of Spider-man fandom, director Sam Raimi and heavy hitters from the cast of the film appeared Saturday at San Diego's Comic-con comics convention, whipping anticipation to an early frenzy ahead of the film's May 2007 opening.
In fact, they used the blog to inform fans of the convention appearance.
At Comic-con, Tobey Maguire (Peter Parker/Spidey) and Kirsten Dunst (his beloved Mary Jane) (click for convention audio) represented the forces of good, truth, and order, while new film villains Topher Grace as Venom and a very lean Thomas Haden Church as Sandman (audio) set fans' spidey sense to tingling.
I have a vision of Grace's fresh-faced "Eric Forman" character from That '70s Show guzzling merlot, doing bongs and giggling a lot with Haden Church's "Jack" from Sideways in the Forman basement with some waitresses they picked up.
Back at Comic-con, muddying the waters of filmic prognostication, Maguire seemed to contradict rumors that the third film in the series would be the finale, saying, "There will be some conclusions, though I wouldn't say it's necessarily the end ... If there are stories worth telling, then we'll tell them." He said the the film's conclusion would be left "open-ended."
Regarding Grace's Venom, Raimi said, "We had different looks for Venom, but [exec producer] Avi Arad wants to stay classic." The unfinished trailer Raimi showed at the convention began with Aunt May cautioning "Uncle Ben wouldn't want us living with revenge in our hearts, just like voices that take you over and turn us into something ugly," and ended with Venom—with essentially the same powers as Spider-man but a much nastier disposition—in classic black equipped with vicious spiked teeth and a tongue that would shame Gene Simmons - very dark. Oh, and there was a lot of creepy black goo.
Article comments
1 - El Bicho
"doing bongs"?
I believe the kids say "smoking bongs" or "taking bong hits", "...rips", or "...tokes".
While at the Con, I was told by someone in attendance at the panel and the press room that Raimi said Harry was not going to be Hobgoblin.
Bruce Campbell is going to be in the film, either as Mysterio or else they are just playing with the fans because they refused to confirm or deny it.
There are rumors that while Topher's character Eddie Brock appears, Venom only makes a brief appearance at the end, setting up S4.
With as much money as the first two have made, there's no way, and I can't believe anyone for a second believes it, that S3 will be the last film. Now it might be the last for Raimi, or it might be the last for Sony now that Marvel is producing their own films, but if anyone thinks this will be the final Spider-man movie, name the wager because I'll take all comers.
2 - DragonX
sweet a spiderman 3, if its good I hope they come out with a four, but since I wasn't at comic-con, I have to take others word for it..
3 - Eric Olsen
in the '70s, wherein the show is set, they said "doing bongs," I have been told.
Yes, I would also guess 3 will not be the end of the line, but if it's a new cast and director, in essence it starts over again, sort of like Batman