Spider-man 3: According to Variety, Marvel Enterprises is already crooning about Spider-Man 3.

News comes as the marketing push for Spider-man 2, which bows July 2, is about to kick into overdrive. The studio is lining up new corporate sponsors and ramping up its worldwide marketing plans.

Sony confirmed that the studio has pushed Spider-Man 3 into development, but would not offer more details.

During a Q4 earnings conference call on Tuesday, Marvel Studios chairman-CEO Avi Arad said that "Spider-Man 3 is in development" and that a "contemplated release date will be probably 2007."

Arad said the pic could possibly bow in 2006, but that "It is a big movie, and we would rather play it safe and talk about the 2007 at this point."

There have been reports that director Sam Raimi has committed to making the movie, and agents and managers for Tobey Maguire (aka Peter Parker), have been working around a tentative "Spider-Man 3" schedule when booking the thesp for other projects.

If the new film is released in 2006, the rollout will match the two-year lag between Spider-man and Spider-man 2. The original Spider-man was released in May 2002.