Veteran character actor James Cromwell has been cast as Captain Stacy, father of Gwen Stacy (played by Bryce Dallas Howard), in Spider-Man 3, according to Hollywood Reporter.
In the comics, Stacy dies saving his a child during one of Spidey's battles with a super-villain, and Gwen blames Spider-Man for his death.
Meanwhile, there've been conflicting reports on which villain Topher Grace will play in the film. Although early rumors named the Chameleon, later reports seemed to confirm he'll play Venom. But Ain't It Cool News' Harry Knowles says he's heard a studio source is sure Grace will be Electro. According to a Blog report received by AICN, that indicates Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker may be wearing the black symbiote suit of Venom:
"It is impossible for spider-man and venom (both wearing the symbiote's) to go head to head?
"I did not say that they were both symbiotes, i said that each character would be wearing the costume that was developed for them, i.e both wearing black in this sequence, which does not mean to say that Tobey's costume is a symbiote. I have said enough.
"Marcus here, i got like a million e-mails and this site only went up today and the moment i mentioned Spider-man 3 i had to block the comments coming in since their were so many. So for the sake of it i thought i might just drop you little tid bits involving Mr Grace, since im working for him as Costume Assistance, which is a job that does not involve me communicating with him believe it or not. Im not allowed to say too much, but i doubt this would do any harm if i was to tell you about my job in more detail and about the 'Venom' costume which james is working on.
"We are working on tobey's black 'symbiote' costume, which is refered to as 'SYMBIOTE#01' because the second version will be worn by Mr Grace. The second version is more advance and we are considering to use motion capture technology, i believe that this would accompany the CGI that was done in the first spider-man movie as i have been told. However you should not expect Venom to be wearing a costume as such because their isn't any, we are considering that he would be wearing a green suit, so that with the CG the 'SYMBIOTE#02' design can be overlayed on him. Sony has spent billions apparently over the years on the whole franchise, but with new developing technology such as pixar's renderman, the job is getting easily done. The fight scenes between tobey and mr grace are also something which we (well them) are looking at, the script is complete and their will be a huge fight which involves tobey getting his portion of the suit (SYMBIOTE#01) completely weakened by the more stronger suit worn by mr grace (SYMBIOTE #02).
"Their are about 60 more people working as costume assistance's and ideas are being contributed in all the time, as they are also improving, however these ideas do not effect the script as thats carved in stone, but they only improve it visually. I've said enough, so just dont start passing this info around because the last thing i want is to be thrown out of something big. And remember this could all change. That's all i could tell you...right now but keep checking back for the plastic cast results from mr grace."