Marc Webb Returns to Indies With GIFTED and THE ONLY LIVING BOY IN NEW YORK

After wowing audiences with his feature debut (500) Days of Summer, director Marc Webb was immediately tapped to direct The Amazing Spider-Man and eventually went on to direct a disappointing sequel before the project was rebooted with input from Marvel Studios. It seemed like a good fit at the time, and I'm still convinced Webb is a solid director; he was saddled with some pretty awful scripts and still managed to create a few memorable sequences, largely thanks to the chemistry he was able to capture between his lead actors, Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone. From what I've seen so far, that's Webb's main strength: depicting relationships on screen. And now it sounds like he's going to take a break from big budget films and go back to his indie roots to do just that.

First up, Webb will direct a movie called Gifted, which, despite the title, does not involve superpowers of any kind. THR says Captain America star Chris Evans will play the lead role in the story of "a man (Evans) who tries to raise the brilliant young daughter of his dead sister but battles with the child's mother over custody." Production on that film gets underway this fall, and Webb already has a follow-up film in place: The Only Living Boy in New York.

That movie has been in the works for years, with Miles Teller taking over for Logan Lerman a little while back. Deadline says discussions are taking place with Jeff Bridges and Rosamund Pike to fill out the story's strange love triangle; the film follows a young man (Teller) who discovers his father (Bridges) is having an affair and when he steps in to try to stop it, he also becomes romantically involved with his father's mistress (Pike).

These small scale stories sound like the perfect antidote to big, made-by-committee studio action films, so hopefully Webb thrives with these two films. I'd like to see him come out of The Amazing Spider-Man movies relatively unscathed.