Look Out Spider-Man!

Having pulled in sums of money that would put some countries' defence budget to shame, Spider-Man is far from sitting on his record-breaking laurels. With the sequel already greenlighted, it has been announced that Alfred Gough and Miles Millar - the writing team behind superhero series, Smallville - have been charged with putting Spidey's second adventure to paper. Naturally disinclined to give anything away at this stage, Gough refused to comment on who the Wallcrawler will face off against this time - ''I can't really talk about it, [Marvel Studios chief] Avi Arad will send the X-Men out to kill me!'' - but star Kirsten Dunst has let slip that two classic Spider-Man villains, Dr Octopus and The Lizard, will be making an appearance. Boasting steel tentacles and a consistently bad haircut, Dr Octopus is a scientist tuned criminal mastermind (sound familiar?) who has sworn an end to the arachnid vigilante. The Lizard - an equally ill-fated scientific type - was once Dr Curtis Connors, a man who used a reptile formula in a bid to regenerate his severed arm but inadvertenly turned himself into a viscious lizard-man and one of Spidey's arch-enemies. "It's sort of a thrilling and daunting task to do the sequel,'' Gough told EW.com. "'They've really hit one out of the park in the first movie, which is great, because it leaves you a lot of areas to explore in the sequel." One thing's for sure, Spider-Man 2 will have some very big tights to fill. Shooting begins next year and Spider-Man 2 will be released in the US on 7 May 2004.