Red Riding star Andrew Garfield has won the coveted role of the young Spider-Man in Sony’s reboot of the billion-dollar franchise.  Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer) is directing the new Spidey movie that takes Peter Parker back to school.  James Vanderbilt wrote the screenplay for the film, which will be shot in 3-D and is expected to begin production in December for a July 3, 2012 debut.

Garfield played a cocky young reporter in Nineteen Seventy-Four, the first of three feature-length TV movies about police corruption, the Yorkshire Ripper and other serial killers that aired in Britain in 2009 and were based on David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet.  According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sony President Amy Pascal and other key studio execs were “floored” by Garfield’s screen test and his work in David Fincher’s new film, The Social Network.

The naming of Garfield ends one of contemporary Hollywood’s major casting contests, which involved nearly every talented young thespian in the business.  The youthful looking 27 year-old L.A. born Garfield, who was raised mostly in the U.K., was chosen from a field that included Jamie Bell, Alden Ehrenreich, Frank Dilane, Logan Lerman, and Josh Hutcherson to name just of few of the actors who were linked to the primo Spidey gig.