The New York Times and Irrfan Khan appear to confirm that the In Treatment co-star will indeed play Nels Van Adder, the minor Marvel character transformed into the demon-like Proto-Goblin, in Columbia's Spider-Man reboot. Just don't ask the actor any details about Van Adder.

"Is that his name?" Khan tells the newspaper's Arts Beat blog. "These science-fiction names don’t mean a lot to me. He’s a character who, I think, was not in the comics or perhaps a minor character. I’ve read some pages, but the whole script hasn’t been made available to me."

The initial casting announcement on Friday referred to the character as "Van Atter," leaving us to speculate that the movie's second villain would be the Oscorp employee turned Norman Osborn's guinea pig. That now seems to be the case. Introduced in 1997, Van Adder was driven insane by doses of an incomplete serum developed by Osborn and Mendel Stromm that transformed him into a taloned, red-skinned monster referred to (on the comic-book covers, at least) as "Proto-Goblin."

Directed by Marc Webb, the untitled Spider-Man movie stars Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker, Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy and Rhys Ifans as, presumably, the Lizard. Production begins this month for a planned July 3, 2012, release.

(via Moviefone)