Tobey and Sam Swing Off

It's being reported all over the place that plans for Spider-Man 4 , starring Tobey Maguire and directed by Sam Raimi, have been scrapped, with Marvel and Sony favouring rebooting the franchise entirely with a new headlining team.


Although the official reason for the change has yet to be revealed, it's widely known that pre-production on the fourth film was not going well, with the film's release date being delayed most recently, allowing Thor to slide into its early May date. The reason for the delay was widely attributed to a conflict between the studio and Raimi over the bad guy for the film. The studio was uneasy with Raimi's choice of the Vulture, mainly because it was an old guy in a flying suit, which they didn't see as exciting enough. The studio wanted to insert the Black Cat, an antagonist/ally/love interest for Spidey. Raimi was resistant, recalling what happened the last time he was forced to insert a villain he didn't care for (coughVenomcough).

With Raimi and Maguire (and, one assumes, the rest of the established cast) out, Sony and Marvel plan to reboot the franchise to a storyline that sees Peter Parker in his teens once more, returning the Spider-Man world to its roots.

I don't know if I'm excited or disappointed by this news, honestly. I never really thought Maguire totally clicked as Spidey. Don't get me wrong, he worked really well as Peter Parker, the mope who can't win, but Spidey should be Peter's unleashed id, and I never got the joyous, hilarious wise-ass motormouth that Spider-Man should be. As for Raimi, him I'll miss. His take was reliably realistic, but it still felt fantastic. Arguably, we wouldn't have any of today's super-hero films without the success of his vision of Spider-Man. Yeah, Spider-Man 3 was not good, but you could tangibly feel the studio interference on that one as much as you could feel some of Raimi's goofy predilections overwhelming the flick. It sounds like he recognized that mistake, and wasn't willing to let this film fall into the same trap.

Interesting to see what will happen.