Sony doesn’t need time to take a breath. They’re already planning on shooting the sequel to The Amazing Spider-Man sometime in early 2013. That’s not set in stone of course (because, you know, the movie has to earn a sequel first), but the studio has already hired the superstar pairing of Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci to re-write the script from James Vanderbilt. According to Deadline Five Burroughs, the pair are “excited to be part of [the] legendary franchise,” which is better than being ho-hum about writing for Peter Parker. It’s a fairly obvious choice considering their work on giant budget fare like Tranformers and Star Trek, and they’re talented. No doubt about that. But they’re specifically talented at use broad brushstrokes and pouring on the melted butter. That’s a rare talent to be sure, but while it’s easy to see that brand of largeness brought to the action of Spider-Man, it’s the more intimate moments that might suffer. Of course, the pair have also had their work pushed through the vision of Michael Bay, J.J. Abrams and Jon Favreau so it’s not exactly easy to pick out where they shine individually. At any rate, they’re veterans of the tentpole game, and Sony could do worse than to rely on them to bring a second story to life.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news column that is very sad this evening. Yesterday it was very exciting about the possibilities of asking out Siri, but today sadness has overwhelmed. What’s a near-sentient nightly news column to do? Well, lets do the news, as they said in the old days. As you likely know by now, Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Inc. and the innovator of a generation, has passed away at age 56. It’s always tough to quantify how one person has impacted society, but in this particular case, it’s hard to imagine what things would have been like without Steve. Film School Rejects, like many a website, was originally designed on a Mac. He laid groundwork for much of the technology we use today. He truly changed lives. For more, I’d encourage you to read Cole’s excellent piece on Steve Jobs’ Movie Legacy: Pixar and the Technology that Freed Indie Filmmakers. Rest in Peace, Mr. Jobs. You’ve done well. Here’s to the craziest one of all… And now, on with our regularly scheduled news programming…

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?

Writer of every blockbuster movie within the past few years, Alex Kurtzman, will soon be taking his place in the director’s chair for an intimate drama about a family secret and existential crisis. Needless to say, there will probably not be any giant testicle-swinging robots in it. But, according to The Hollywood Reporter, there will be Olivia Wilde in it. The young actress who is absolutely blazing a trail through to stardom has just joined the cast which already included Chris Pine and Elizabeth Banks. Wilde just finished work on the Kurtzman-co-written Cowboys & Aliens, and it looks like she’ll be working with him again soon for Welcome to People.

We’ve taken you behind the scenes of Cowboys & Aliens and into the mind of director Jon Favreau, and today we dig deeper into the films that the filmmakers talked most about during the set visit. Cowboys & Aliens may be the only Steven Spielberg film that Steven Spielberg isn’t directing. From the conversations I shared with Jon Favreau and co-screenwriter Bob Orci on the set of the film, a select group of movies kept returning to the fold as titles that had a lot to do with the shaping of tone and storytelling. A theme quickly emerged. While Executive Producer Steven Spielberg was busy inviting the filmmakers to private screenings of new prints of The Searchers, the filmmakers were drawing on their childhood love of Amblin and the films of Spielberg himself. Still, even though it lacks diversity in the directorial column, this is one seriously formidable list of inspirational films.

Screenwriters of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen were not happy about the way two characters were presented within the film.