Remember that rumor that popped up last week claiming that Rachel McAdams had been cast in Spider-Man 4 as Black Cat? McAdams has responded, calling it pure internet rumor… but is it?

McAdams tells Entertainment Weekly that the story is not true.

“That’s a total rumor, I have to say,” the actress, who will next be seen in the Dec. 25 action-adventure tentpole Sherlock Holmes, tells EW. “I was hanging out in Toronto the other day and someone came up to me and said, ‘I just heard you’re doing Spider-Man 4.‘ And I said, ‘Really? No one told me!’ It’s not true.” A rep for Sony Pictures concurs: “It’s an Internet rumor, as so many things are these days.”

I hate to sound like a conspiricy theorist but I think that McAdams and Sony might be lying a bit.  Remember last week we also found out that Sony had put out a casting call for a new female lead for the fourth Spider-Man film, and that Romola Garai (Amazing Grace, The Other Man) has auditioned for the role. Garai is only a few years younger than McAdams, and certainly has the same look, which makes me think that McAdams was somehow involved in discussions for the role.

Also a new source confirmed that Black Cat is in the screenplay, but the character is now the daughter of the new man in charge of the Daily Bugle, who just happens to be one of Spidey’s new villains (which one, we’re not sure). We’ll see if this intell turns out to be true, but we have heard the same thing from more than one source.