There are very few screenwriters working today who are as powerful as Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, especially the ones working in big blockbuster films. The writers of the first two Transformers movies, Cowboys & Aliens and Star Trek are as close as you can get to a household name as a screenwriter, and now they'll be bringing some of their considerable power to yet another major franchise, this one with a superhero at the center. According to a press release from Sony, Kurtzman and Orci have been hired to write The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the sequel to this summer's The Amazing Spider-Man that is naturally in development many months before the movie actually opens.
The movie's more than just in-development, actually-- back in August of last year, before production had even wrapped, Sony set a May 2, 2014 release date for the new film, and if this summer's Spider-Man opens as well as its expected to, you can figure that sequel will go into production quickly in order to make that release date. It makes sense not just to move forward on the screenplay now, but to bring in the likes of Kurtzman & Orci, who clearly know their way around a big blockbuster narrative. Though the pair are constantly busy producing Fringe and Hawaii Five-O, they don't actually have any writing gigs lined up-- the last one was the Star Trek sequel, and with that one in production they should be free to get started with Spidey. You may remember that James Vanderbilt had been hired at one point to write the script, so Kurtzman & Orci are technically doing a rewrite job, but I imagine they'll have a pretty significant hand in reshaping it.
Yes, their track record is a bit checkered, though they've all but pushed all the blame for Transformers 2 on to Michael Bay thanks to the writer's strike. But Kurtzman and Orci know what they're doing, and their hiring isn't just a strong sign of faith in the sequel, but in this summer's Amazing Spider-Man, which Sony clearly believes is the making of a franchise. Now if K&O just get it together and bring in Paul Feig for some writing help, we'll really be in business.
