You have to wonder whether the amount of writers most blockbuster gets through actually helps make the films better. Many suggest it’s becasue producers and directors don’t really understand writing so think throwing a lot of people at the script is bound to work. Spider-man 4 is currently going through the revolving door of writers, with the latest to come in being Seabiscuit director Gary Ross, who’s been asked to do a thrid rewrite of the screenplay (the first two were taken care of by James Vanderbilt and David Lindsay-Abaire respectively.
Ross may have plenty Tobey Maguire experience with Seabiscuit and Pleasantville, but he’s not exactly the first person you’d think of for a Spider-man movie, although he does fit into the pattern of using literary writers on the Spider-man movies (for example Pulitzer prizewinner Michael Chabon was involved with Spider-man 2), and is probably being asked to beef up the character side of the story, which was rather missing from the third film. He is a very good writer, so hopefully his influence on the script will produce a blockbuster with a bit more to offer than gust a lot of explosions and Spidey spurting white good all over the place.