Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the now revered directors behind The Lego Movie, have been hired to helm a Spider-Man animation, to hit theaters in July 2018. The duo will produce the movie with Ari Arad, Matt Tolach and the recently departed Sony chairman Amy Pascal.

The Lego MoviePhil Lord and Christopher Miller were lauded for their work on The Lego Movie

The movie, announced at CinemaCon on Wednesday by Sony chief Tom Rothman, will exist independently from the projects in the live action Spider-Man universe, all of which are believed to be moving forward as planned.

Lord and Miller are taking primary creative control of the movie, writing the treatment and producing with one eye on directing. The pair began their career in animation with the hit Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Sony is keen for them to direct Spider-Man (though no formal deal is in place, yet).

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The character will next appear in Marvel's Captain America: Civil War before Sony releases a new standalone movie in July 2017. Rothman didn't shed any light on the new live-action movie, though Drew Goddard is rumored to be directing. 

One thing that we do know is that Andrew Garfield is NOT Marvel's Spider-Man and The Wrap have obtained a shortlist of the five up-and-coming actors that the studio are looking to cast. They are Nat Wolff, best known for The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns, Asa Butterfield, who was excellent in Ender's Game, Tom Holland, from The Impossible, Timothee Chalamet, best known for his exploits on TV's Homeland and Liam James, who starred in The Way Way Back.

Sony is expected to make screen-test offers to the Spider-Man front-runners in the next two weeks.

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