What's going on with Spider-Man 4? Here's what happened: I came on here to excitedly report that Perez Hilton was saying that John Malkovich would star in the fourth film as the villain The Vulture. Although The Vulture is not one of the more classic Spider-Man villains, especially when Dylan Baker has been hanging out in the background of the previous three films as Dr. Curt Connors, just waiting to become The Lizard. No matter, Malkovich is a great actor and Spider-Man has always been my favourite superhero. This was good news.
But then, when I went onto the Internet Movie Database to check if this information was good (Hilton is the man after all who falsely reported that Johnny Depp and Phillip Seymour Hoffman would play The Riddler and The Penguin respectively in the next Batman flick). I am then greeted by a front page headline that says, as reported by Nikki Finke and Mike Fleming of Deadline Hollywood, that director Sam Raimi and the whole cast of Spider-Man 4 are out and that, instead of going forward with the sequel, Sony will scrap the project and instead reboot the franchise.
I guess it's not surprising. It's no secret that Raimi had conflicts over the third and weakest Spider-Man film and rumours floated around incessantly whether he and his cast would even return for a fourth film due to their escalating salary demands. Now, word on the street is that Raimi felt that the script for the next Spidey flick sucked and thus would not be able to meet the deadline the studio set for him.
Hollywood Reporter is furthering the gossip surrounding the picture by reporting that the clashes are over the villain. Apparently the studio wasn't keen on the idea of The Vulture as the villain (who Raimi wanted to use instead of Venom for the third film) and instead wanted a romantic sub-plot involving The Black Cat and another villain on top of that. Many writers (some quite accomplished) have been commissioned to give it a try, but none could apparently make it work.
I don't know how I feel about this. On the one hand, maybe the franchise could use a new director. Raimi is a filmmaker whose work I highly respect and I know that Spider-Man 2 is still among the best comic book adaptations ever, but with the lackluster Spider-Man 3, maybe it's time he took the back seat and explore new options as he did with last year's Drag Me To Hell.
On the other hand, Malkovich would have been a stellar villain and the recent franchise reboots that have come out, more often than not, have sucked. It would also be horrible if the studio hired some hack action movie director who would bow to their every command and fill the thing up with meaningless wall-to-wall action and forget about the characters (as was the case with The Incredible Hulk reboot). If there is one thing to be said, it is that Raimi truly did love and understood Spider-Man and all of it's characters.
I'll probably have more to say about this as more information becomes available.
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