Sam Raimi‘s Spider-Man trilogy is one of the most memorable film franchises in the history of cinema, but it got canceled before the fourth film in the franchise could come out, because of the bad reviews that Spider-Man 3 got. Now, writer James Vanderbilt, who worked on The Amazing Spider-Man and its sequel has come out and said that the script for Spider-Man 4 was completely written when it got canceled back in 2010. This information is really important now as fans are now demanding another Spider-Man film starring Tobey Maguire as the webslinger, after his appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Maguire’s Spider-Man completely changed what people expected from superhero movies when the first Spider-Man came out in 2002, and then Spider-Man 2 (2004) surpassed its predecessor and became one of the best superhero films ever made at that time, but when the time came for Spider-Man 3 (2007) the film had to deal with many problems like overstuffed plot and poor writing.
While Spider-Man 3’s box office collection wasn’t as good as the second film in the franchise, it was still pretty good that Sony decided to make a fourth film, and Raimi thought that he got a chance to make up to fans for Spider-Man 3. The development for Spider-Man 4 began in 2008, with every main character set to return to the franchise, but the script for the film was revised multiple times and it faced a lot of narrative problems, which motivated Sony to cancel the film and reboot the franchise and make The Amazing Spider-Man.
During a promotional interview with Screenrant for his upcoming film Scream, Vanderbilt talked about Raimi’s Spider-Man 4. The writer said that the script for Spider-Man 4 was completely written before the film got canceled. Read the full quote by Vanderbilt below:
“Yeah so, Spider-Man 4, we had a full script sort of ready to go, and, as is sort of the case when you’re a working feature writer, they brought in some other great writers to punch it up. They changed some things, and I think about a year later, they got to a point where — and I don’t know why — but they got to a point where they decided that wasn’t the road they were going to go down.”
In the years since Spider-Man 4 was canceled, many of the plot points that were supposed to be in the film were revealed showing Peter Parker and Mary Jane working on their relationship and also grieving the death of Harry Osborne (James Franco). Also, the villain in Spider-Man was supposed to be none other than Dr. Curt Connors aka Lizard played by Dylan Baker, who was supposed to reprise his role from the previous films. Concept art for the fourth film was also revealed and it showed many of Spidey’s iconic characters like Rhino, Shocker, Mysterio, Black Cat, and Vulture. The script for the fourth film never got as solid as Raimi and Sony wanted because they didn’t want to repeat the mistakes they made during Spider-Man 3.
Recently Maguire and Andrew Garfield reprised the roles of their versions of Spider-Man, bringing three Spider-Man in one film and one-shot, which left the fans to wonder what if we got to see The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and Spider-Man 4. If there is any hope for Spider-Man 4, fans will definitely have to wait for it as Raimi is currently working on another MCU film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the title character.