Rob Pattinson can’t be the new Spider-Man
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A story today from the Reelz Channel website, picked up like a found dollar bill by sites all around the Web, offers the tantalizing and stupendously specious news that Rob Pattinson is being cast as the new Spider-Man.
There are several reasons this can’t happen. For one thing, as the studio points out, the director would need to come first, and if Marc Webb or anyone else is on it, they’d certainly want to canvas the town before making a hire. The second problem is age -- Pattinson is now 23, and this clearly is going to be a high-school movie. And finally, it would be a terrible idea. There’s already a question mark on the movie -- why bring in an actor with questionable skills? Next they’ll have Taylor Lautner as Captain America. Or as, um, Max Steele.
Of course, the Pattinson story isn’t true at all. The site that originated the item (origin story?) belongs to the Reelz Channel -- you know, the place Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein went to work after the Washington Post. And even the Reelz people didn’t believe it: The dateline on the story is April 1. (It looks like it was republished today after first being published on the actual date, though it’s tough to tell.)
Of course that didn’t stop half of these sites from reporting the “news,†straight-faced, and sourcing it to “reports.†Somewhere in India, Sidd Finch is laughing.
-- Steven Zeitchik
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