Raimi and Maguire Return

This is the BIG news we’ve all been wait­ing and hop­ing for. Both main star Tobey Maguire and direc­tor Sam Raimi have been locked in to Spider-man 4! This report comes from the reli­able scoop web­site Nikki Finke’s Dead­line Hol­ly­wood Daily. There is not yet a deal for Kirsten Dunst to return as Mary Jane Watson.

Prin­ci­pal Pho­tog­ra­phy & Main Villain

Prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy is set to begin in the fall of 2009 to tar­get a May 2011 release. The long gap until that date affords time to recruit a main vil­lain; with spec­u­la­tion strongly sug­gest­ing Dr. Curt Connors/The Lizard. The Sin­is­ter Six have also been men­tioned. Vil­lain rumors for Spider-man 4.

Spider-man 4 and Spider-man 5 together

The report also states, as pre­vi­ously rumored, that they are look­ing for angles at pro­duc­ing the next two sequels at the same time because of its cost effec­tive­ness and the dif­fi­culty in keep­ing every­one together.

Venom Movie

And Sony has hired a pair of screen­writ­ers to get going on the Spider-Man 3 spin­off movie Venom. Given that comic book artist/writer and action fig­ure maker, Todd McFar­lane, who is one of the cre­ators of the Mar­vel vil­lain, doesn’t think a Venom movie could do well with a vil­lain as the cen­tral char­ac­ter, my sources think Sony should let Topher Grace, even though he was blown up at the end of Spider-Man 3 (yet a por­tion of the Venom cos­tume sur­vived), stay in the role because the like­able actor could be a a sym­pa­thetic evildoer.

Thanks Robin!

The LATimes are report­ing, via Spider-man pro­ducer Laura Ziskin, that Spider-man 4 will be tar­get­ing a release date in May, 2011 — hop­ing that the movie would be ready in three years time. She also stated that the screen­play wasn’t yet completed.

Com­ing Soon have spo­ken to Sam Raimi about his future involve­ment in Spider-man 4 — things are look­ing up, though the future is still uncertain:

“James Van­der­bilt is writ­ing the script and I’m excited to read it. I think it’s going to be done in a few months. I’m hop­ing it’s as great as our dis­cus­sions were about it and I’m hop­ing it feels right for me because I love Spider-Man. I’m hop­ing I’m well rested enough to embrace it and I’m hop­ing Sony wants me to do it. If all of those things come together, I would love to do it. There are a lot of unknowns about the future.”

Thanks Robin!

J.K. Sim­mons has also been speak­ing about is role in Spidey sequels on the set of “I Love You Man”,

SHH!: So we know that James Van­der­bilt is close to turn­ing in a script for “Spider-Man 4.” Have they reached out to you yet?
J.K. Sim­mons: We sort of check in once in a while. They say, you know, we want J.K. to do it. We don’t know where. We don’t know when. We don’t know who. We don’t know any­thing, you know? They signed all of us for the first three films. Sam, Tobey, all the way down the line to me and we’ll see where it goes. I mean its all con­jec­ture and you guys prob­a­bly know more than I do at this point. There was talk of doing four and five con­cur­rently and I don’t know if they’re still con­sid­er­ing that or not and I spoke to Tobey in I guess it was Feb­ru­ary, sort of awards sea­son time and he’s cer­tainly amenable to doing some more and hope­fully we’ll be able to get every­body back and make another good one.

SHH!: Or a cou­ple of ‘em?
Sim­mons: Cou­ple, three, four, five! What­ever. You know, I could buy a big­ger house.

SHH!: What if Sam decides not to come back as a direc­tor but stays as a pro­ducer, would you guys still be…
Sim­mons: Well…

SHH!: Would you and the rest of the gang still come back?
Sim­mons: Well, I can only speak for myself, but if Sam were not the direc­tor but still had a hand in it then I would cer­tainly have a rea­son­able amount of faith in it. Obvi­ously if he’s the direc­tor I’m there 100%. If he’s not involved at all, which I think is VERY unlikely, then it would be a sit­u­a­tion that I would have to think about. But if he’s involved, hope­fully direct­ing or at least as a pro­ducer then, I’m pretty con­fi­dent that it would be some­thing that I wanna do. Plus they pay money.

Latino Review last week hinted that Sony were shop­ping around for an actor to replace Tobey Maguire as Spider-man in the next movie, cit­ing Patrick Fugit and Michael Angarano as pos­si­bil­i­ties. How­ever, Sony Pic­tures have told SHH that there is no truth to this rumor and they are not look­ing for a new Spider-man.

Thanks Gree­nieGob­bie

Accord­ing to Cin­e­mat­i­cal, Zodiac screen­writer James Van­der­bilt has turned in a work­ing draft for the 4th spider-man movie. The real kicker is that the story arc pre­sented spans two films, poten­tially allow­ing both to be filmed at the same time.

We’ll see how this and Spider-man 5 develop in the com­ing months.

Thanks Gree­nieGob­bie

The hour and a half show, Movie Geeks United, hosted at Blog Talk Radio, has a new episode dis­cussing the lat­est movie release, Fan­boy, and the upcom­ing Zodiac director’s cut — in which they inter­view the screen­writer James Van­der­bilt. Of note to us Spidey fans, he talks about com­ing into the next Spi­der­man movie. Here are some choice quotes via Comics2Film:

“I went in on that. I really loved the films,” Van­der­bilt said. “It’s sort of an odd process because you’re sit­ting down with the peo­ple who made the first three and going, ‘Well let me tell you what to do.’

But I was lucky enough that they were inter­ested in me and I’m a huge fan of those movies, so we closed that up right before the strike. Once the strike’s over I get to go to work.”

Comic Book Resource have been talk­ing with Sam Raimi. I have extracted the Spi­der­man 4 parts of the inter­view for you here, though I rec­om­mend read­ing the full arti­cle as it gives an inter­est­ing insight into the thoughts and processes behind Raimi himself.

Do you have any incli­na­tion yet towards whether you’d like to pro­duce or direct the next Spider-Man movie, or is too early to call?

Sam: I think that’s going to be up to Sony Pic­tures, and I think that it’s too early for them to say, actu­ally. But cur­rently I’m work­ing on… well, not now, but as soon as the writ­ers strike’s over… I’m going to begin work­ing with a writer on the screenplay.

Is it impor­tant to you that the story fol­lows on from the first three? I mean, how impor­tant is inter­nal con­ti­nu­ity to you? Can you go Evil Dead-style and change details a lit­tle bit, maybe change the story up a lit­tle bit?

Sam: If I was writ­ing it I would have a very strong opin­ion about that, but we’re hir­ing a writer to come up with his own take. Sony was will­ing to go either way, we’ll just have to wait and see what the writer comes up with. I think anything’s pos­si­ble, though.

I mean, there’s been so many dif­fer­ent ver­sions, it doesn’t have to fol­low the movies that we’ve made. I’d very much like to see Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man, so I have a per­sonal inter­est in that, but cer­tainly anything’s pos­si­ble. Spider-Man’s such a big char­ac­ter in the comic books that he could endure a lot of dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tions. You could start over or you could start with a dif­fer­ent aspect of the story than I’ve focused on in the pic­tures I’ve made, we’ll just have to wait and see what the writer comes up with.

Do you think the story will still be inter­est­ing if Spider-Man moves on and gets mar­ried? Because within the world of comics, a lot of writ­ers com­plain that once he got mar­ried the sto­ries weren’t as inter­est­ing, and the movies seem to be head­ing towards that. As some­one who’s a mar­ried man and has a fam­ily, what do you think of this idea that he can’t be inter­est­ing once he’s married?

Sam: He’s most pow­er­ful to me as an ado­les­cent. The thing that Stan Lee cre­ated that was so spe­cial was that he was a very young char­ac­ter, and he’s a kid try­ing to deal with these fan­tas­tic pow­ers. The idea of being mar­ried coun­ters that a lit­tle bit. It’s a place of accepted respon­si­bil­ity ver­sus being on the road to learn­ing respon­si­bil­ity. It’s asso­ci­ated with adult­hood ver­sus being the ulti­mate kid who’s a super­hero. So it’s not that you couldn’t tell a good story with a mar­ried Spider-Man, but my favorite Spider-Man is the unmar­ried one.

Wiz­ard recently sat down with Sam Raimi to talk with him about the Spider-man tril­ogy, the DVD release and most impor­tantly, what the future holds for him­self and the spidey franchise:

Look­ing back, you’ve worked on Spider-Man in some way for nearly eight years. Has the excite­ment stayed with you?

RAIMI: I’m just as excited about the char­ac­ter, and so in that sense, yes. Although the phys­i­cal energy level between how I felt before I started shoot­ing ver­sus what was left of me on the last day of pho­tog­ra­phy, I was so exhausted at the end of “Spider-Man 3″ I can’t tell you. My love for the char­ac­ters and my pas­sion for the sto­ries are the same, but I was just a shell of the per­son that I was after all of those movies.

If you had to take a break and pick a direc­tor to replace you on the fran­chise, is there any­one at the top of your list?

RAIMI: Because I love Spider-Man I would just say—I don’t want to pick some­one. I don’t know if I’ll be direct­ing the pic­ture or not, but I’d like to say that it would be some­body that was the best gift I could give to Spider-Man—someone who under­stands him and loves him and could bring his pas­sion and love to the char­ac­ter. A char­ac­ter direc­tor prob­a­bly; no one else.