Spider-man 4 is no more, and much of the news on this blog now per­tains to a vision of Spider-man that will never be made. Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Sam Raimi et al, will not be back in a Spider-man incar­na­tion. I thought I ought to make that clear before con­tin­u­ing with the next piece of news.

Sony instead opted to reboot the Spider-man fran­chise with a new direc­tor, Marc Webb, with actor Andrew Garfield play­ing Peter Parker. Film­ing is set to start this Decem­ber in Los Ange­les, and is also expected to take place in New York. The project is being pro­duced by Laura Ziskin and Avi Arad.

The film is sched­uled for a July 3rd 2012 release.

Speak­ing with MTV, Sam Raimi gave some Spider-man 4 updates, reveal­ing that the script is cur­rently under­go­ing some small rewrites whilst pro­duc­tion is prepar­ing for a March 2010 start, aim­ing for a May 6th 2011 release date. Cast­ing hasn’t started yet, but it is set to get under-way shortly.

We’re hop­ing that it’s the first week in March,

At the moment, pre-production is in full swing, even as screen­writer Gary Ross con­tin­ues to work on the script.

He’s work­ing on a draft, I just gave him some notes and he’s doing a rewrite right now.

The pro­duc­tion is start­ing to come together. I’ve got a pro­duc­tion designer who is start­ing to design the sets and the envi­ron­ments that the pic­ture will take place in. We just brought aboard Scott Stokdyk as one of the two visual effects super­vi­sors, and I worked with him on all three ‘Spider-man’ pictures.

None of the cast­ing has really taken place, but we’re start­ing to think about that now.

IMAX and Colum­bia pic­tures have con­firmed that Spider-man 4 will be simul­ta­ne­ously released in stan­dard and IMAX the­aters on May 5th, 2011. The film will be “dig­i­tally re-mastered” into the IMAX expe­ri­ence, it’s unlikely scenes will be natively shot in the IMAX format.

“The last two ‘Spider-Man’ releases have been avail­able in IMAX the­aters, and we’re very much look­ing for­ward to our return to a wider IMAX the­atre net­work with this excit­ing new chap­ter in the con­tin­u­ing adven­tures of Spider-Man,” said Rory Bruer, Pres­i­dent, World­wide Dis­tri­b­u­tion for Sony Pic­tures Releas­ing. “The addi­tion of so many new IMAX loca­tions will give even more fans of Spider-Man an oppor­tu­nity to expe­ri­ence the action and adven­ture in a unique way.”

“‘Spider-Man’ con­tin­ues to be one of the world’s most pop­u­lar motion pic­ture fran­chises, and we are very excited to include the lat­est chap­ter as part of our 2011 slate,” said IMAX CEO Richard L. Gel­fond. “Our net­work has grown sig­nif­i­cantly and we con­tinue to roll-out new the­atres vir­tu­ally every week, giv­ing more movie­go­ers the oppor­tu­nity to expe­ri­ence the movie in IMAX.”

“We’re so excited to once again work with our friends at Colum­bia Pic­tures, Sony and Mar­vel to bring this beloved super­hero back to IMAX the­atres,” said Greg Fos­ter, Chair­man and Pres­i­dent of IMAX Filmed Enter­tain­ment. “The ‘Spider-Man’ fran­chise has been so impor­tant to the growth of our net­work and fan base over the years and we’re cer­tainly look­ing for­ward to re-teaming with the entire cast and pro­duc­tion team to bring this next chap­ter to movie­go­ers worldwide.”

It seems Raimi’s long time friend, Bruce Camp­bell, may be up for a much big­ger role in the fourth movie. They spec­u­late that this could be a vil­lain, per­haps Mys­te­rio. But that’s all con­jec­ture and noth­ing to take seri­ously. Which Spider-man char­ac­ter would Camp­bell play best?

The actor, who has a long rela­tion­ship with direc­tor Sam Raimi via his lead role in the “Evil Dead” tril­ogy, made mem­o­rable cameos in the first three “Spider-Man” films.

How­ever, he may have a big­ger role this time around. Bruce told Access that in the next install­ment in the super­hero fran­chise, he’s been told he has a major part – but didn’t yet know any­thing about his character

At Wiz­ard World Philadel­phia, dur­ing a ques­tion and answer ses­sion that included Ted Raimi, Michael Papa­john (aka the car­jacker and Ben’s Killer) revealed that he shall be repris­ing his role for Spider-man 4. No details as to what that entails, if he told us he’d have to kill us.

Astute fans will know, in the first Spider-man movie, the car­jacker is chased into a ware­house where he trips and falls to his death. How then, does this char­ac­ter reap­pear in Spider-man 4?

Maybe he sur­vived and is now a vil­lain? Maybe there’s a flashback?

Todd Black has been speak­ing with New York Post’s blog­ger Reed Tucker about ‘The Tak­ing of Peck­ham 123′, but in doing so also slipped in a cou­ple of Spider-man 4 ques­tions to whet our appetites.

Black con­firmed that Kirsten Dunst shall be onboard for the fourth Spider-man movie, although rumors of a wed­ding between Mary Jane and Peter Parker were shrugged off. As for the vil­lain, Black denied the Mor­bius vam­pire rumors that Raimi has thrown at us. As for com­ments on a vil­lain, he/she shall be New York based, to quote:

We’re just com­ing up with who the villain’s going to be now. We’ll be shoot­ing in New York again. Trust me, peo­ple will appre­ci­ate who we pick, because it’ll be a big part of New York.

Pit­doc have snapped a shot of the first Spider-man 4 poster at the recent Licens­ing Show in Las Vegas which comes via AICN. These are avail­able in very high res­o­lu­tion by click­ing the image. The sec­ond one is a tidy up of the first, cropped and with lev­els, con­trast and color corrected.

Spider-man 4 poster

Spider-man 4 poster tidied up

Sam Raimi has offered up some minor updates on Spider-man 4 dur­ing his “Drag Me to Hell” pro­mo­tional inter­views. Speak­ing with Cin­e­mat­i­cal, Raimi says:

“I learn lessons on every sin­gle pic­ture I make,” he said. “I learned a lot on [Drag Me To Hell], about tim­ing, and that you don’t have to give up any char­ac­ter at the expense of hor­ror. It’s just an excuse that maybe I’ve used in the past. As far as Spider-Man, I’ve learned a lot of lessons about what peo­ple didn’t like and mis­steps that I’d made. But I learned those lessons on the pre­vi­ous two, I was just a lit­tle qui­eter about them. I made a lot of mis­takes, and it’s part of the rea­son I so want to make this next story of Peter Parker.”

Raimi con­tin­ued, “I really think I know in my heart who the char­ac­ter is, and I haven’t quite been able to sing the song yet, or bring it out to the extent or degree of detail that I feel in my heart that I can. And I may not be suc­cess­ful, but I still feel like I know it bet­ter than I’m able to play it; I feel like the kid that really prac­ticed at the piano recital, with years of comic books, and when I got to my other recitals, I some­times made some mis­steps with them. There’s a whole crowd there and they think that’s as well as I know the piece, but I really do know it a lot bet­ter than that and I would like one more chance at that char­ac­ter. The Spider-Man films, I’ve made mis­takes, but I really do look at them as things that I’ve learned, and hope that when I apply what I’ve learned to this next one, I really make a film that peo­ple enjoy and is really true to the char­ac­ter in a fresh, orig­i­nal way. That’s my goal.”