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.”

Sam Raimi is talk­ing about Spider-man 4 again, this time with Scifi Wire, although again noth­ing too spe­cific. Raimi hopes that Kirsten Dunst will come on board for Spider-man 4. He goes on to explore the idea of a darker and more edgy Spider-man movie in light of The Dark Knight and Watch­men movies.

“I’m hop­ing that she is going to come aboard, and I’ve got a meet­ing com­ing up with her,” Raimi said in a group inter­view last week in Bev­erly Hills, Calif., where he was pro­mot­ing his upcom­ing hor­ror film Drag Me to Hell. “I think she would like to. But I don’t want to speak on behalf of her.”

With the advent of The Dark Knight and Watch­men, do you expect that Spider-Man 4 will be a lit­tle darker and edgier, too?

Raimi: What­ever it is, I think will be a direct result of the best style to bring about our writer’s screen­play. And as soon as I read that, I will know what that is. Edgy could be a direc­tion, but I don’t think it will be applied with­out really under­stand­ing the character’s jour­ney from the inside out first and then fig­ur­ing out the best way to bring that about.

And then, as far as the other influ­ences, mak­ing it dif­fer­ent from the other films, … I hope we don’t react to these very good and some­times bad super­hero movies around us. I hope that we just [look] ever deeper into the truth of who Peter Parker really is—as a human being and the unique char­ac­ter, and that we cel­e­brate that, which is a lot of the rea­son I want to make this next pic­ture. I still believe I have an under­stand­ing of Peter Parker as the char­ac­ter that I have not quite put onto the screen yet.

I’m not talk­ing about Tobey Maguire’s per­for­mance, which I very much love; I’m talk­ing about my under­stand­ing of the char­ac­ter. I feel like some­times a kid at the piano recital. And I know this piece really well. I know it by heart. And I some­times get it right, and some­times I don’t. But I want a chance to really play it the way I feel it. So I’m hop­ing it’s a really good screen­play and I can express the char­ac­ter through that. I’ve got a really good writer [David Lindsay-Abaire]. …

In order to reach the May 6th 2011 dead­line release date for Spider-man 4, as much as pos­si­ble must be ready in time for the first pro­duc­tion day, as per usual, this means that the David Lindsay-Abaire penned script should be com­pleted by the end of sum­mer 2009, ‘about three months’ to be more pre­cise. SciFi wire also quizzed Raimi about poten­tial vil­lains for the fourth movie, but he declined to comment.

“We have to make the release date, and on all of these pic­tures, the ‘Spider-Man’ films–and I’m sure it’s the same as with many of the other bigger-budgeted films–they have release dates far in advance of a screenplay/ […] So it’s about get­ting it ready the best you can in time for the first day of pro­duc­tion. That’s what we’ve always done, and that’s what we’ll try to do again.”

“I’m not at lib­erty to dis­cuss the vil­lains yet. […] I think I have to wait till the fin­ished screen­play, and then it’d really be up to Sony Pic­tures and the pro­duc­ers to deter­mine when they want to release that infor­ma­tion. To them, it’s usu­ally a big, a big, big thing, a big moment where they want to present the vil­lain with the proper respect or fear that he or she deserves.”

Raimi has also spo­ken out about the cre­ative power he would like to wield for the next movie. This comes after the third movie whereby pre­sum­ably the stu­dio took over some of the cre­ative deci­sions (is that per­haps what lead to the crazy danc­ing Peter Parker scene?), via Empire:

“They really gave me a tremen­dous amount of con­trol on the first two films, actu­ally. […] But then there were dif­fer­ent opin­ions on the third film and I didn’t really have cre­ative con­trol, so to speak.

The best way for me to move for­ward on films, is that I’ve got to be the sin­gu­lar voice that makes the cre­ative choices on the film. I love Spider-Man so much that I’d like to con­tinue telling Spider-Man sto­ries. But only under those cir­cum­stances where I think I can hon­our him.”

MTV has spo­ken Spidey-4 with Sam Raimi; no real juicy gos­sip bits to be had, but good to hear the project is mov­ing swiftly for­ward nonethe­less. It does appear that the dual Spider-man 4 & 5 shoot­ing sched­ule that was pre­vi­ously rumored may have been dropped, pos­si­bly in favor of The Avengers movie com­ing in 2012.

“The writ­ers, pro­duc­ers and I are work­ing out what the story will be, but we haven’t been talk­ing in terms of Part 4 and 5. […] I’ve read that [about ‘Spider-Man 5’] also, but right now we’re just work­ing on the story for ‘Spider-Man 4,’ just that one film.”

[…]

“We’re def­i­nitely talk­ing about work­ing from all the mate­r­ial in the comic books and noth­ing [invented] out­side of that. All the char­ac­ters or vil­lain or vil­lains, what­ever we decide to do will be from Stan Lee’s cre­ations or those that came after him.”

[On who will be the next villain(s)]

“I do have a pretty good idea, but I’m just not a lib­erty to say yet,”

[On Kirsten Dunst in Spider-man 4]

“I can’t imag­ine mak­ing a ‘Spider-Man’ movie with­out Kirsten,” he said, seem­ingly con­tem­plat­ing the idea in his head with a long pause. “Of course it can be done because Spi­der Man has existed with­out the char­ac­ter of Mary-Jane but she’s one of my favorite parts and it would be a shame not to have her in the pic­ture. I’m hop­ing she’ll be in it and I’m plan­ning on hav­ing a story with her in it.”

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.

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.

Back in August 2006 — nearly a year ago now, we had our first insight into what lies in wait for the future of both Mar­vel films and the Spider-man fran­chise. In an inter­view with MTV, Mar­vel pro­ducer Kevin Feige had this to say,

“There will be many more Spider-Man films to come,” he promised. “We already have stacks of ideas for the next one because of the wealth of sto­ries in the comics. We could be mak­ing Spider-Man movies for the next 20 years, based on the 50 years of Spider-Man his­tory we have.”

That doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily guar­an­tee, how­ever, that Tobey Maguire will con­tinue as the man under the mask.

“When you’re con­cen­trat­ing on one movie at a time, there’s a begin­ning and a mid­dle and an end to that process,” Feige rea­soned. “We’ve been top­ping each one as they go, [and if that hap­pens again], that’s the time for those discussions.”

And when it comes to Tobey Maguire’s involve­ment, he denied rumors that he would not be par­tic­i­pat­ing and instead had this to say (via Yahoo Movies),

“I feel like the sto­ries all deserve to be told, and, you know, if… the whole team wants to get back together, and we feel like we can make a good movie that’s worth mak­ing, then I’m up for it.”

In an arti­cle at SciFi​.com these sen­ti­ments were uttered again,

“Well, it’s pos­si­ble that we make another movie,” Maguire said in an inter­view. “It all depends on if there’s a story worth telling. I feel very proud of the three movies that we’ve made. I feel like the sto­ries all deserve to be told, and, you know, if they come up with a good movie, and the whole team wants to get back together, and we feel like we can make a good movie that’s worth mak­ing, then I’m up for it.” 

The arti­cle con­tin­ues, stat­ing that co-star Kirsten Dunst would also be inter­ested in repris­ing her role as Mary Jane Watson;

“There’s an open­ness at the end [of Spider-Man 3], which I like, but … I feel like this is a tril­ogy unto itself,” she said. “And I think if we ven­ture into a fourth, it will be some time from now and in a new way. Because I don’t think Sam can do that: con­tin­u­ing on this same course. I think he needs to ven­ture as an artist and do other things; oth­er­wise, none of us will have any­thing good to bring to the fourth. So I think we all need to ven­ture out a lit­tle bit, and then maybe we’ll come back together one day and do another one.”

This brings us very nicely to the pro­jected involve­ment of Spider-man direc­tor Sam Raimi. In April 2007 he announced that Sony had plans to pro­duce another 3 Spider-man films,  whether he shall direct these is at the moment unknown. Raimi had this to say in an Empire inter­view in July this year,

“I want to help con­tribute to the pro­duc­tion,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll just be a pro­ducer on it but if I can work with the writer in such a way so that direct­ing would be right for me, I don’t know. We’ve had our first meet­ing on Spider-Man 4 and we’re look­ing for the writer.”

As for who is cur­rently work­ing on the illus­tri­ous project, in Jan­u­ary 2007 a deal with screen­writer David Koepp was sought, though it seems as of July a new writer may be involved.