A little over a year ago, we noted that celebrated director/visual-flourishist Julie Taymor would be tackling perhaps her most challenging source material yet. This project would afford no opportunities for portentous lion births, or soldiers lugging Lady Liberty across a model Vietnam in an extremely literal interpretation of a Beatles lyric. Rather, Taymor set about adapting Spider-Man into a Broadway musical. Helping to sell audiences on a hovercraft-enabled lead villain whose big showstopper, "Everything's Coming Up Pumpkin Bombs," closes the first act is none other than U2's Bono and The Edge, who came on board as composers. Now all that's left to round out this spider-shit insane idea is you, triple-threat Tobey and Kirsten types!

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Paramount interns are plucking rose petals as we speak for Brad Grey's arrival at the office tomorrow, by which time Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Do We Really Have to Write it Out Again will be on its way to the top five — and possibly even an all-time record — for a five-day opening weekend. Most midnight screenings around the country tonight are already sold out, with at least one prognosticator firming up his tracking to reflect a $173 million opening. The number would bump the final Star Wars installment Revenge of the Sith from the number-one spot and, paired with Iron Man, give Paramount the best May in its history.

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Earlier today over at McSweeney's, we downloaded what's reportedly author Michael Chabon's original screenplay for Spider-Man 2. Reworked, reconsidered and rewritten a few dozen times (by three other writers; Chabon got story credit) before making its way to the screen as Sam Raimi's blockbuster, the script features some of the moody, angsty masculine hallmarks threading the Pulitzer prize-winner's novels like Wonder Boys and The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. The skeptic in us has its doubts, but while we're still torn over the overwhelmingly pranky nature of Oliver Stone's W, we don't know who the hell else would have written 252 pages of fan fiction this dynamic or, well, literary. In any case, we have our weekend reading cut out for us. [Via Videogum]

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Your Dad will likely be thrilled to hear this morning that Paramount plans a Jack Ryan revival starting in 2010, while the rest of us are intrigued to see Sam Raimi recruited as the studio's go-to helmer for the reborn franchise. A glorified genre director if ever there was one, Raimi's stewardship of Sony's $US2.5 billion Spider-Man empire reportedly impressed the 'Mount enough to lock him in for the fifth installment of the spy series for a 2010 release.

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Somehow finding the one red-costumed individual in this city patrolling a sidewalk in front of a Hollywood landmark with no interest in discussing the WGA strike, Defamer videographer Molly McAleer enjoyed a brief chat with the Chinese Theatre's Reasonably Passable, Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man, inviting the Polaroid-proferring hero to share his origin story.

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Should the prolonged strike everyone's nervous about ever come to pass, the studios could resort to using cheap, non-union talent to keep their lucrative movie franchises on schedule and avoid the huge financial losses of production delays. In the interest of helping with their alternative casting plans, we direct any desperate producers to this thread on a Mazda owners' message board [warning: not graphic, but probably NSFW], in which a confused poster describes how he stumbled upon some Detroit-area superhero hopefuls keeping their chops sharp in case they ever get the call from Sony to step in and make sure Spider-Man 4: Spidey on Venom gets into the multiplex on time.

• Weirdest Thing I have ever seen (WW) [Club RSX.com]

A heartfelt thanks goes out to the Defamer Special Correspondent on Meaningless Honours Involving Personalised Stars And Filthy Slabs of Sidewalk, who braved the throng of crazed View groupies assembled to gape in awe as Barbara Walters took her place on the Walk of Fame today to send us the above photograph. Before seeing this indelible image, we feared that the Paris Liberation Front had lost all of its momentum, its message drowned out by the voices of an unreasonable mob who won't be satisfied until they can bathe in the heiress's privileged blood. But now that we know that her noble cause has been taken up by tireless crusader for justice Guy Wearing An Ill-Fitting Spider-Man Suit In Front of the Chinese Theatre, hope has been restored that Hilton will be freed from her unacceptable persecution sooner than any of us dare dream.

This summer's prolonged barrage of blockbusters with extensive toy tie-ins - Spider-Man 3, Pirates 3, Transformers, etc - provides parents with an unprecedented opportunity to divert an unhealthy chunk of their discretionary income to Hollywood, as any trip to the multiplex must be immediately followed by one to the toy aisle, lest this generation of savvy youngsters report their miserly guardians to Child Protective Services for their neglect. Today's LAT looks at the competition to see which studio/manufacturer combination can extort the most money from families with their pirate-themed televisions, robot-concealing trucks, or splooge-launching Spider-guns (now with spiral-squirting action!), offering up a brief encounter with a local dad who's losing his battle with the wallet-plundering, merchandising menace:

Hasbro hopes it can count on people like Juan Reynoso to make that profit a reality. Wearing a "First National Bank of Dad" T-shirt, Reynoso ran into a Target store recently on an "emergency diaper run" only to get stuck in the toy aisle. Reynoso's 4-year-old, Matthew, scored Chick Hicks, the only missing piece in his collection of dozens of car toys from last summer's hit, "Cars".

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In this trying time of unjustly incarcerated heiresses, let us not forget what's truly important: the reporting of this weekend's box office numbers: 1. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End - $US43.188 million After successfully wresting the record for "#1 Worldwide Opening of All Time" from Sony's Spider-Man 3 over the seemingly endless Memorial Day frame, Disney's Pirates 3 laid another smackdown on their rival, crushing Team Spidey's second-weekend drop-off of 50% with a 62% plummet of their own. Tomorrow, the studio will proudly commemorate this achievement in the pages of Variety, trumpeting Pirates as "The Summer's #1 Pump-and-Dump Blockbuster, At Least Until Transformers Arrives!"

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Disney has hopefully ended the studio dick-measuring contest over Spider-Man 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest's duelling claims to the record for the biggest worldwide opening (six-day) weekend, splaying its box-office inches across a two-page spread in today's Variety. While the (technically?) triumphant studio's design team was initially going to allow the huge number and curiously tiny #1 WORLDWIDE OPENING OF ALL TIME copy speak for themselves, they couldn't resist surrendering to their cruder instincts with a message taunting their rival and its humbled, slump-shouldered hero. [Image: Digital Variety]

• 'Pirates' treasure grows overseas [Variety]
• Box Office Catfight By Hollywood Studios [DHD]