For Spider-Man 2, Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon was brought on to draft the screenplay. General consensus seems to be that most of his work was re-written several times before producing the Spider-Man 2 we all know, love and held at a high enough standard to have those standards decimated by Spider-Man 3’s two dance sequences (maybe three, if you count the breakfast-making boogie).

Now, Sony looks to be trying to recreate magic by bringing on another Pulitzer Prize Winner to draft Spider-Man 4, which should see the return of Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker, Kirstin Dunst as Mary Jane and Sam Raimi as reluctant director…

THR reports:

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire got out of a rabbit hole, only to be ensnared by a spider’s web.

Lindsay-Abaire, who won a Pulitzer in 2007 for his drama “Rabbit Hole,” is in final negotiations to write “Spider-Man 4″ for Columbia.

Lindsay-Abaire has said in interviews that his plays tend to be “peopled with outsiders in search of clarity,” which would put his work on sympathetic terms with Peter Parker, who in his classic incarnation is the perpetual outsider.

The choice of scribe also signals that that filmmakers are intent to focus on character, something that critics said got lost in the third installment.

Gersh-repped Lindsay-Abaire, now writing the book and lyrics for the Broadway musical adaptation of “Shrek,” has dipped his toe in Tinseltown before, with his adaptation of “Inkheart” due in January. He is also adapting “Rabbit” for 20th Century Fox and Nicole Kidman.

None of this is really settling. Robots? Inkheart? The book for Shrek: The Musical? Not the best pop entertainment credits for anyone, let alone a prize-winning author.

Also strangely absent are details about the original draft of Spider-Man 4 by Zodiac scribe James Vanderbilt. We don’t know if new writers are being brought in to beat a straight story out of Spider-Man 4, or if writers are being brought in to focus Vanderbilt’s plot within the character of Peter Parker.

We don’t know much, but we know this is a big coup in title only. Expect more writers to be marched out to meet this script on the battlefield.