FX to air extended version of Spider-Man 2 and a peek at 3.

While pruriently watching channel-surfing past the season finale of Nip/Tuck last night, I caught an FX promo for the network’s airing of Spider-Man 2 on January 2nd, ostensibly as a big-ticket lead-in to its new show Dirt.

The Spidey promo announced that FX would be showing an extended version of SM2 as well as a new look at SM3, a nice little bit of news that’s been picked up by a number of like-minded eagle-eyes who have reported in to Superhero Hype.

What’s not clear, however, is what exactly this “extended” version will show. Brendon at film ick speculates that there could be a missing scene featuring J. Jonah Jameson. I’ll let you read his idea in his words, but let me just say that I hope he’s right. Another thought is that the extended FX version could include some special effects and extended action scenes that Sam Raimi reportedly created just for the film’s inevitable double-dip DVD release. Waaaaay back in 2004, he told Sci Fi Wire that Sony had thrown some money at him to add “all-new scenes to the film for the upcoming Spider-Man 2.5 special-edition DVD”, so perhaps FX has scored a deal to preview that footage prior to the new DVD’s release next year before SM3.

If you’re keeping score, that’s all called “synergy”. That means that we will once again gleefully surrender our money to the studios in order to feed our irrational fears that we might miss some critical element of our favorite cinematic properties (see: Lucas, George).

Actually, I’m feeling a little bit smug because I put off buying the Spider-Man 2 DVD when it was first released for this exact reason. By now we should be well-versed on the pattern in which a franchise’s sequel dictates the re-release of a new, better DVD of the previous installment in the hype-building months before the new movie comes out.

And by the way, that image above is officially the dopiest one I’ve ever put up on this site.