AceShowbiz -

The fourth "Spider-Man" film is yet to kick off its production, but Sony Pictures Entertainment has moved on with "Spider-Man 5" and "Spider-Man 6" by hiring screenwriter James Vanderbilt. According to Variety, the studio "has quietly engaged" the writer for the original "Spider-Man 4" screenplay to start work on the next two films for the web-slinging superhero.

Words are, Vanderbilt is being brought back because the executives at Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios like his ideas. The scribe for "Zodiac" is expected to pen an interconnected storyline that will extend from the fifth movie into the sixth with a possibility of back-to-back shooting, like what had been planned for the fourth and fifth films before the idea was scrapped.

The writer of the upcoming "The Losers" was originally hired by Sony to write the screenplay for the fourth film. However, when the first three "Spider-Man" director Sam Raimi came into the fourth project and allegedly didn't embrace all of Vanderbilt's ideas, "Rabbit Hole" playwright David Lindsay-Abaire was brought in to re-write Vanderbilt's script.

It is still unclear whether Raimi and lead actor Tobey Maguire will be involved in the fifth and sixth films once again. There is speculation that if the key people of the "Spider-Man" franchise do not return, Vanderbilt's script would be the blueprint for a franchise reboot.

As for "Spider-Man 4", it is being prepped to begin production early 2010. While this fourth installment of the series has secured Raimi and Maguire, the questions circulating the potential villains are yet to meet a satisfying answer. Lindsay-Abaire's script is being re-written by Gary Ross. Produced by Avi Arad, Grant Curtis and Laura Ziskin, the superhero movie will be opened in U.S. theaters on May 6, 2011.