Anton Yelchin A Spider-man Screen Test Finalist

Ever since Sony announced they were rebooting their Spider-man franchise earlier this year, there have been rumors and suggestions about many young actors taking over the role of Spidey, including Star Trek’s Anton Yelchin. Now a new report says that Yelchin has done a screen test and is one of the finalists for the role.

 

From Chekov to Peter Parker?

 After negotiations with director Sam Raimi and actor Tobey Maguire broke down on talks for a 4th Spider-man film, Sony quickly announced they were going to relaunch the franchise with director Marc Webb, who is taking Peter Parker back to high school. And a new report from Deadline Hollywood says that Sony is close to coming to a final decision on who will be their choice to play Peter Parker in their next Spider-man film, due on July 3rd, 2012.

 It has been rumored that Anton Yelchin has been one of the possible contenders and now Deadline reports that on Friday Sony executives viewed a screen test with Yelchin and a number of other finalists for the part including Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot),Aaron Johnson ( Kick-Ass), Andrew Garfield (The Social Network), Logan Lerman (Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief) and Alden Ehrenreich (Tetro). A few others are also on the list of finalists. The report says that Sony wants to pick the new Spidey soon so they can start casting the supporting roles.

If Yelchin makes the final cut, this would be the third time stepping into a previously established genre role, following playing Chekov of in Star Trek and Kyle Reese in Terminator Salvation, both released in May 2009. And for the 4th of July week in 2012 you may again get a choice of two Yelchins: the Star Trek sequel featuring Anton as Pavel Chekov or the new Spider-man featuring Anton as Peter Parker/Spider-man.

 

66 Comments
oldest
newest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

That’d be excellent news for a deserving actor, though I still don’t think the reboot is very good news for the audience :/

Yelchin’s a talented guy … I hope that if he gets the gig, the gig steps up to be worthy of his abilities.

…might not be a bad choice…

it wasn’t his fault, but Chekov09 was incredibly annoying! I hated him by the end of the movie!

This movie is gonna blow bad. It’s gonna be like Twilight. Bring back RAIMI. He said himself he learned from his mistakes from the 3rd one. 2 good movies out of 3 movies aint bad. Spider sense tingling danger for this movie.

I guess it is a pay check but not sure it is a good career move. I’m fully expecting a reinvent of spiderman to be crap.

Teen angst was covered in Kick Ass and if you want to get real then they will have to go in that direction but they will never go that full on. Kickass got to bed the girl, they won’t be doing that with spiderman.

Sad to say but spiderman may end up being the poor mans Kick Ass. How sad would that be?

I hope he gets it.

Rebooting Spiderman = STOOPID

Can we not wait a bit until it actually needs rebooting? It would be like saying Star Trek needs to be rebooted.

#4: “Kickass got to bed the girl…””

I thought it felt entirely phony though, when he did. Felt like a Hollywood sop (though I guess they were just adapting the source material … lots of comics are made of Hollywood sop, too) …

Studio execs are looking at ‘The Dark Knight’ and seeing the billion dollars that that reboot to Batman made and that is what is driving this Spiderman recast and reboot and every other reboot.

That would be awesome!

If he accepts it Sony will drive a DUMPTRUCK full of MONEY up to his door.
He films Spidey and I think it will be a surprise hit.
Everybody is surprised at an early reboot of this franchise. I think this will garner it a lot of media attention.
I could see Anton playing Peter Parker.

Yelchin wouldn’t be a bad choice. Peter Parker should be a little geeky looking. :-)

I’m a crusty old guy, but I’m actually upbeat about a Spider-Man reboot. As good as the Raimi Spider-Man movies were, there were annoying “Raimi-isms” (pointy things going in people’s eyes for instance) that I’d just as soon see gone from future Spidey films. The cast was getting too old for the parts too.

Scott B. out.

@7 Actually, in the source material, Kick-Ass didn’t get the girl. . . when she found out that he was basically lying to her, she had her boyfriend beat him up, among other things. Him sleeping with the girl made it more commercial (since Kick-Ass wasn’t a Hollywood movie).

~FS

Anton Yelchin was better as young Kyle Reese in “Terminator Salvation” than as Pavel Chekov in “Star Trek”. I found Anton’s Russian accent in “Star Trek” to be over the top, annoying, and un-Russian like.

I’m not that excited over the “Spider Man” reboot to be honest. I don’t think it was necessary. I understand that it was probably time to recast, but why take it back to Peter Parker’s high school days when they can just set the movie a few years after the third one?

Well, I think that’s cool for Yelchin. But I still will not see it in the theatre. I hope that Star Trek blows it out of the water…

NO MORE REBOOT THAT IS ENOUGH HUH!!!!!!! KEEPING ROLL PART 4.

I think Anton could easily be a better PP/Spiderman than Tobey Maguire.

And I thought he was an excellent Chekov, I thought he and McCoy were the originals who were most clearly captured in the reboot. I didn’t mind the accent at all, RDR… because while he may not have spoken like a true Russian, he spoke like Chekov. Maybe that’s what a Russian accent sounds like in the future!

I dont know where that studeo is going with the re-boot. They cut the production buget to 85$, thats a very steep cut back from what they were using on Spidey 1,2,3. I wonder if the failing economy had anything to do with that.

85$ million*

Personally, I like a reboot for spider-man… Kirsten Dunst is a horrible actress and there was nothing for her character to do but scream and be a b*4tch. Tobey was good, but has aged too much to be believable as Parker.

Reboot Spiderman… Didnt they just do that? Seriously. Give it some time. A few years at least. Sheesh

Reboot Spider-man = FAIL

Maybe they should just make a “Robot Spider Man” movie. Keanu Reeves can play Robot Peter Parker and Robot Spider Man. It can be done on the cheap, though Reeves would take up about half the budget.

Plus, if it fails, the producers have a built-in excuse: its a Keanu Reeves movie!

I read that they may base this on The Ultimate Spider Man comics. I have to admit I never read one but my take is that its a more “modern” rendition of the original comics.

Aw come on, Yelchin’s accent was a riot in ST!
Doesn’t anyone have a sense of humor?
Spider-man? He actually might just be the right choice.

No offense, but at 47 I’m not really shopping for puberty-oriented flicks. “Spider-Teen” and Yelchin have my best wishes, but I doubt I’ll be going to see it.

spider-man vas inwented by a little old lady from stalingrad

oops, leningrad, not stalingrad, please, don’t hurt me :)

I actually thought Yelchin was the best part of the movie. Most people thought differently.

#22: I don’t think Keanu Reeves has the range to play a convincing robot.

#28: He’s definitely one of the things I liked about the film. I’m 100% pro-Yelchin-as-Chekov; I just hope they give him some more substantive material to work with in the next film …

I never saw him in Terminator Salvation so I don’t think I can fully judge his acting ability, but to be honest just from what I saw in Star Trek I wasn’t that impressed. I thought that Tobey Maguire was the perfect Peter Parker and yeah, Spiderman 3 failed epicly, but I think its way too early to call that incarnation of the franchise dead. Not like it matters, they’re gonna reboot it regardless of what we think.

I can picture him as Peter Parker, but my mind’s eye is having trouble with him as Spider-man.

Not to mention would there be any explanation why Chekov is suddenly superhero-buff in the next Trek movie?

KIRK: Bones, why is Chekov twice as big as he was last movie?

MCCOY: Dammit Jim, I’m a doctor, not a personal trainer!

Yelchin made Chekov a fun character. As a fan of ToS, and someone who watched it when it was in first run, making Chekov anything other than a Davy Jones knockoff was a feat requiring both skill and talent.

I learned to love Walter Koenig, and I can’t imagine the movies without him, but in ToS, he was poorly written, and focused on a fanbase that didn’t exist at the time. Only his truly decent nature, and love for the Star Trek universe made the Checkov character work. It was Walter, not the writers that connected with me.

Anton made the connection immediately, because he recognized Koenig’s brilliance in making a poorly written character into something that fit into the world of Star Trek, and made it work from the first moment someone asked him to portray that in front of a camera.

#30 “I never saw him in Terminator Salvation so I don’t think I can fully judge his acting ability,”

I’d recommend “Charlie Bartlett” if you ever decide to give him a second try; he had the starring role in that, and it’s a good bit of fun that shows him off pretty well as an actor, IMO.

Plus, it must have more than a hundred “Harold & Maude” references in it, which is just … well, speaking as a full time (indeed, professional) nerd, I have to just kneel and pay homage to that level of obsession :)

Yah yelchin is actually russian so his accent should be better although he did do chekovs ws for vs -i also thought he was much better written being the young enthusiastic genius which i never really thought of the original chekov as others have said koeniqs love of trek n fans rounded out his character we grew to love-yelchin would do great if chosen as peter parker-hes a good actor-

I’m more worried about what the next Superman is going to be like. If it’s like Batman, well that’s not a good thing…

The new Spiderman reboot will make its money out of curiousity just like The Phantom Menace did in 1999 – wether it’s going to be a shit film or not?

As long as Raimi and Maguire are not involved, I’m ok with that.

How to make Spider-Man Begins

6 different villains
4 different love interests
ugly old actors and actress frowning and crying for 2 hours straight
multiple cringe inducing scenes
lots of cheese
recycled moral themes
PROFIT !

It would be better if they cast one of the below rising young actors:

Shia LaBeouf, Anton Yelchin, Zac Efron, Ed Westwick, Penn Badgley, Chad Michael Murray, Adam Brody, Thomas Dekker, Chace Crawford, Emile Hirsch, James Lafferty, Michael Cera.

But will Spider-Pig be in this? THAT is the question.

Spider-Pig, Spider-Pig. / Does whatever a Spider-Pig does. / Can he swing / from a web? / No he *can’t*, / He’s a pig. / Look out! / He is the Spider-Pig!

I hope they cast Omid Djalili as The Kingpin!

Anton can do better than this.

#38 – No, that’s what you’d have gotten if they had decided NOT to reboot. That, and some pointy things going in people’s eyes.

Scott B. out.

Oh please…doesn’t a franchise need to be older than 2 yrs before they can reboot it?…Spiderman 3 was just out 2 yrs ago…this is absurd…just change actors or plot…don’t call it a reboot!….just sounds silly…

I though Yelchin was pretty good in Trek… but I can’t say I find him to be a singular talent worthy of all the work that’s come his way recently. He’s like Shia Labeouf in that respect.

I wish it didn’t have to be guided by the Twilight trend in these new movies. My wife tried to get me to watch one of those the other day. I’ve never seen so much posing and doing nothing in all my life. It was like thumbing through a Cosmopolitan magazine. With not as much substance. I fear these new movies will be even drippier than the weepy, weepy scenes in the Raimi movies.

Spiderman blows. As a hero, as a movie franchise. Blows huge goats.

I’m an ardent TOS guy and have issues with the new movie, but I have to say, the new Chekov embodies the Trek spirit.

The quintessential whizkid over-achiever with ambitious designs on his career with the fleet.

The original Wesley Crusher? Yep.

Most people hate him, too but like it or not, it’s the very quality of the best and brightest forging humanity’s future that is purely Star Trek.

The very opposite of the ‘fashionable’ ironic anti-hero people have been duped into revering.

Troubled loners = losers. Sharp, bright contributors = cream of the crop.

Personally, I’d prefer a continuation of the existing movies than sending Parker back to high school. IIRC, if Sony doesn’t produce a movie within a certain timeframe, the rights revert back to Marvel…..which would then allow them to utilize Spider-Man in their movie universe. I guess by sending them having Parker in high school, it signals that they hope to have movies going for years.

Yep, it’s The Secret Life of the American Spiderteen.

Bleh. I think if we’re going to watch a kid transformed into a superhero, then please let’s go instead with Captain Marvel and see the transformation of high school kid Billy Batson.