The Amazing Spider-Man Goes Viral

Sony/ Marvel via Facebook. All Rights Reserved

There’s some changes coming to the Spidey we know and love in the upcoming Amazing Spider-Man movie, and Sony’s newly-launched viral marketing campaign gives us some new hints about what’s new. Check out the new viral video that reveals the new Daily Bugle… and who may be taking over the J. Jonah Jameson role in the reboot!

Sony just revealed their viral campaign to hype the upcoming Amazing Spider-Man, with a pretty cool concept– a newscast from The Daily Bugle (apparently a TV station as opposed to a newspaper this time out) that paints Spider-Man as a menace to society (guess some things never change). The first feature includes an interview with Captain Stacy (Denis Leary), who seems to be taking over the role as Spidey’s number one detractor in the public eye, and after giving his rundown on why we shouldn’t trust this “webbed menace,” he promotes the new viral site, conveniently enough webbedmenace.com. There’s also a hotline that refers you back to the site, which I’m sure will have tons of cool easter eggs as we lead up to the movie’s release this July.

The vigilante worship/ enmity from Capt. Stacy is a cool way to go viral with Spidey, and while I will certainly miss the curmudgeonly JJ, I like the modernizing of the Bugle to be a broadcast media outlet and Stacy should be a great foil for Peter, with the added impact of having the NYC police force behind him. There’s sure to be some other more drastic changes in the new movie, including some rumors of a new and quite frankly very disappointing twist on the death of Uncle Ben. I’m really hoping the changes that end up being true are more surface-level like the ones in this viral campaign, and not something that would compromise the classic origin of Spider-Man– Peter’s origin story is one of the best in the history of comics, and it would be terrible to see the reboot try to “fix” what clearly isn’t broken.

Check out webbedmenace.com for more viral fun with the Amazing Spider-Man!