You remember when Tobey Maguire was first selected, most of the fans were angry. They felt, what kind of a guy is that for a superhero? Nobody thought it was a good idea. Yet he turned out to be great. The people at Marvel who do these things are really pretty smart. If they chose this guy, he'll probably be terrific.

If I were retired I wouldn't know what to do because I'd have to think, well, now what is it I want to do? And what I want to do is what I'm doing. I enjoy coming up with new ideas, which if I'm lucky they might be good ideas. I enjoy seeing them take shape. And I'm having fun doing it. So I wouldn't know why I'd want to retire.

If you have superheroes or characters that exist in the same world, and you're doing movies of them, wouldn't it be fun to put a couple of them together in one movie? Audiences love that. It's a natural thing to do that.

Usually, the biggest hang-up is the script. You could have a script done in six months that you love, or it could be like The Fantastic Four it's been almost 10 years.

I think it's just the challenge. It's not that all my life I've wanted to do characters [in Marvel] , because I never particularly thought about it, but the challenge of saying, "How could they be done differently that may be more absorbing or more effective?"

I want to get that same feeling that everybody logging on to our website is sharing a little bit of an inside joke, and the rest of the world is oblivious to it although I want to have most of the world.

Singing a song, playing sports - anything that entertains, that takes people away from their own problems, is good.