​I like to consider myself a well-balanced nerd, so I don't just follow video game news - I follow movie news too! How's that for balance? Anyway, if you're like me, you probably heard the news yesterday that the Spider-Man movie franchise is going through some big, big changes. Spider-Man 4 is dead. Tobey Maguire is out. The Dunst is out. Director Sam Raimi is out. The franchise is being rebooted with an all new-film that will return Peter Parker to his high school roots (which CHUD.com's Devin Faraci says is because the studio wants to pull in some of the Twilight audience, and he's probably right. It's a bizarre, confusing situation and I'm not an expert on the movie business, so I won't try to explain why it's happening.

What does this mean for video games? Well, Activision certainly can't be happy. The publisher has the rights to the Spider-Man movie franchise through 2017. With Spider-Man 4 originally scheduled for summer 2011, the next Spidey game was likely already in production (although probably at an early stage). If so, that work was a waste of money and man hours. Even if they were just working on concept art, it's useless now as all the characters will look different.

It's possible that there will be another Spider-Man game that's not tied to a film before the next movie comes out, probable even. But in short, a reboot in the movie franchise means a reboot in the game franchise. That's not necessarily a bad thing. The Spider-Man swinging engine was starting to show its age, but now there's time to freshen up the tech, improve the graphics and otherwise keep the generally decent Spidey franchise current.

The talk of the geekosphere may be all about the Spider-Man movies right now,  but in today's entertainment industry, what happens on one side of it affects what happens in all the others.