But don’t think that Sam Raimi hasn’t learnt his lesson. He’s decided to make Spider-Man 4 intimidatingly cerebral in its complex exploration of themes like Oedipal desire, quantum immortality and the ethical ambiguity of human interpretations of good and evil.

Well, that’s what we assume, anyway. It’s been announced that the script for Spider-Man 4 will be penned by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire. Great! We loved his play Rabbit Hole – especially the scene where, after wrestling with grief following the accidental death of her four-year-old son, the lead character dances the Twist with Kirsten Dunst, cooks some eggs and then pulls a funny face.

It’s easy to forget that Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 had impressively deep themes. Spider-Man taught us that with great power comes great responsibility, and Spider-Man 2 taught us the sacrifices necessary to achieve greatness.

Then Spider-Man 3 came along and taught us that if you ever get covered in sticky black alien-jizz you’ll end up with hair like Pete Wentz. It rounded the trilogy off nicely, really.

But since then The Dark Knight has been released, and for the first time Spider-Man is playing catch-up. Audiences have moved on – they don’t want their superheroes to fight big sandy men and then dance with Ron Howard’s daughter any more. Now they want their superheroes to wrestle joylessly with ethics, in the dark, while adopting a weird voice that sounds like a farting buffalo.

So, with that in mind, Spider-Man director Sam Raimi has decided to give 2011’s Spider-Man 4 a punt into the realms of the highbrow. He’s hired Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire to do the script, as MTV reports:

Apparently, “Spider-Man 4” has landed one heck of a screenwriter in Pulitzer Prize winner and playwright David Lindsay-Abaire. Since Lindsay-Abaire’s plays focus on (in his own words) “outsiders in search of clarity,” the choice suggests that Columbia wants a return to a character-driven “Spider-Man,” and a Peter Parker who struggles with his heroic powers.

We’re sad to say that this news has actually made us a little bit intrigued about Spider-Man 4. David Lindsay-Abaire’s plays are as universally acclaimed as they are high-minded, and this bodes really well for the movie. And if he remembers that nobody wants to see Kirsten Dunst again, we’re even happy to overlook the fact that David Lindsay-Abaire also co-wrote the low-rent animated 2005 Paula Abdul movie Robots.

But mostly we’re excited because it looks as if Spider-Man 4 will be far more intelligent than Spider Man 3. Don’t get us wrong, there’ll still be an excrutiating kitchen-based dance scene in the new movie, but this time the characters will be doing abstract interpretive jazz-ballet to Bartok’s Rhapsody Folk Dances for Violin and Orchestra No. 2.

You see, Travis Wright is one of the writers of Eagle Eye – the movie that’s top of the American box office despite looking like it was crapped out by a puppy with a gammy tummy – and for his next trick he says he’s working on a script for Blade Runner 2.

Obviously Travis Wright writing a Blade Runner 2 script is a terrible idea. Not because of the important cultural significance of the original or anything, though. No, we’re dead against the idea of Blade Runner 2 for one reason and one reason only – it’ll probably end up having bloody Shia LaBeouf in it, won’t it.

If you were to make a list of films that nobody should ever think about giving a sequel to, Blade Runner would be right at the top, along with The Godfather and James Bond. Blade Runner was an especially singular film; both direct enough to work as an action movie and vague enough for its audience to interpret it however it wanted. The last thing it needs is a sequel.

But tell that to Travis Wright, one of the co-writers of Eagle Eye. According to an email received by Slashfilm, he’s working on a sequel to Blade Runner himself right now:

“I recently attended a Q&A session with one of the writers of ‘Eagle Eye’ after a free screening organized by the magazine Creative Screenwriting. During the Q&A, the writer said that he and whomever it was that helped him co-write the ‘Eagle Eye’ screenplay were in the process of writing a sequel to Blade Runner, and had already contacted the producers of the original, etc.”

Best of all, according to the email, the full title of Wright’s script is Blade Runner 2: Meet The Deckards! and proposes that Eddie Murphy will star as all of Harrison Ford’s extended family.

That’s a lie. Actually the Blade Runner 2 script is still going to be set in 2019, but with Phillip K Dick’s technologically dystopian worldview reduced into something a bit more realistic-seeming to audiences of 2008. To mirror this, during the movie’s climax, when Harrison Ford kills another replicant who looks a bit like Rutger Hauer, the replicant gives this stirring soliloquy:

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. A cat in a shoe on the internet. A drunk man trying to bum a Landrover at lunchtime. A Nintendo Wii. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain…”

That’s a lie as well. In fact, by all accounts it seems as if Blade Runner 2 hasn’t got any sort of studio backing whatsoever, and that Travis Wright is just writing it in the dim hope that someone one day will want to pay for it.

That’s fairly unlikely to happen – not many people are stupid enough to want to sully a classic like Blade Runner with an rashly thought-out sequel – and so the fate of Blade Runner 2 is set.

It’ll be filmed in the woods on someone’s mobile phone and star a couple of blokes from accounts and the HR lady’s sister, the way all good sci-fi sequels should be.

Read more:

Exclusive: Eagle Eye Co-Writers Working on Blade Runner 2 – Slashfilm

So when Brad Pitt announced that he was going to star in a movie adaptation of State Of Play, the blisteringly well-received BBC thriller that made a star out of Bill Nighy and won a slate of awards, it looked like Brad Pitt had finally got it right – he was making a film that was serious enough for him not to be taken merely as eye candy but not so serious that its constant sermonising turned audiences away. Not that it matters now because Brad Pitt has walked away from State Of Play right before filming was supposed to start and the studio wants to sue him. But Brad Pitt will get the last laugh because he'll still get to show off his acting chops in the movie he's making instead – Mr Pretty's World Of Doe-Eyed Gazing.

Brad Pitt has often said he's envious of Leonardo DiCaprio's career, since DiCaprio ditched his teen heart-throb image and now makes serious-minded popular movies like The Departed and Blood Diamond while Brad Pitt is content to gurn through smug nonsense like Ocean's Thirteen while occasionally making serious-minded Oscar-bait movies like Babel and The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford – movies that hardly anyone wanted to see.

But that seems to be changing a little – recently Brad Pitt has been putting his name to everything from Coen Brothers movies to F. Scott Fitzgerald adaptations to films about Richard Nixon. Whether or not anyone will go and see these films is another matter, but at least we know that nobody is going to see Brad Pitt in the Hollywood remake of State Of Play – because Brad Pitt isn't going to be in State Of Play any more.

Based on the BBC miniseries about journalists investigating a crooked politician – that won three Baftas, a Royal Television Society award, a Banff television festival award, a Broadcasting Press Guild award, a Cologne Conference award, a Directors Guild of Great Britain award, an Edgar Award and a Monte Carlo TV Festival award – the Hollywood remake of State Of Play is to star Edward Norton and Helen Mirren. But not Brad Pitt any more, because he's decided at the last minute that he didn't like the script. State Of Play's studio Universal has put out the following statement:

"Brad Pitt has left the Universal Pictures production of 'State of Play.' We remain committed to this project and to the filmmakers, cast members, crew and others who are also involved in making the movie. We reserve all rights in this matter."

Brad Pitt's walk-out follows a couple of weeks of meetings with director Kevin McDonald over the quality of the script. And since the writers' strike forbids making any last-minute script-changes – like adding more scenes where Brad Pitt showers or rescues puppies from burning trees while everyone watching weeps with undying gratitude – Brad Pitt has left.

So while Universal toys with the idea of suing Brad Pitt for backing out of State Of Play, it's also on the fast-track to look for a replacement. Johnny Depp's name has been mentioned, as has Russell Crowe's, and yet John Simm – the actor who made Brad Pitt's role his own in the original miniseries – scandalously doesn't seem to have been given a second thought.

But perhaps we're being too harsh. Brad Pitt has been around for long enough to know what's good and what's bad, and maybe the script for State Of Play really was beyond repair. After all, you don't get to make flicks like Troy without learning a thing or two about quality, do you?