Confirmed: Spider-Man 4 Delayed [Updated]

Wow I was wrong.

Entertainment today

I call bull!

NIKKI FINKE is exclusively reporting that SONY decided today that they are going the RE-BOOT route with an all new cast and director. WOW


Chuck

@M-Cat :

Wow thank you dude, that is exactly the comic i was refering to =)

Magnetic Eye

there is a post about marvel that is newer than this article and it talks a little bit about marvel sueing for the rights to spiderman and x-men.

There's a lot of cool characters that would work for me but it entirely depends on how the filmmakers bring them to life.

Unfortunately, I'm fearful that with the way Sony is handling it all, characters like Carnage and Kraven may not be as cool as they were in some of the stories we love them from the books.

@ Haggislaw

I'm not positive but I think you may be referring to the "Spiderman" series started by Marvel with Todd McFarlane. The first five issues were a combination story of the Lizard and Kraven against Spiderman and it was pretty decent. Not a great read but it was dark and would make for a decent movie if given the right script. I think it came out in 1990.

Kill it with fire!

I think Raimi could do very well with Carnage (from the horror point of view)

Agree to you all. Sony did screw up with not letting Raimi do the Sandman Vulture Combo.

A List Villain was Venom and could have easily hold his own Movie (with let's say a B List, say Rhino, getting punshed in the Face as build up for the Main Arc)

Now the only true combo I could see work would be Kraven and Lizard. There was a very dark Spiderman comic i read ages ago (not even sure it got published by marvel back then since the violence and mature drawings remind meon Darkhorse). That would make a very good concept and Raimi the one director to make it happen. Doe anyone know which comic i'm refering to? I couldn't find it anymore.

LOL; DiZZy if that's true it's both profound and sad...
;) :(

Matt Keith

Carnage would be awesome on screen but I can't see it happening with Raimi. If they get it right though imagine how badass that would be.

@the old man

Sony can't think that far.

Well the damage has been done with SM3 and I do think they should bring in the lizard.They alrady had curtis connors already in SM2 and SM3 and if SM5 is a big follow to SM4 than maybe they should bring in cranage on SM5.If you remember connors had a piece of the vemon suit and if you think about it the piece can transform into carnage suit and goes looking for a host or have connors do some kind of experiment on a prison inmate and it goes out of control and that inmate turns into carnage.But if this keeps going on than they should just drop it and not rush like they do with sequals these days.

this is lke superman- 1 and 2 great 3 and 4... not so much

As already said and I agree, with all the A-list villains used, there's no villain who can stand on his own. Hobgoblin is too similar to green goblin. A combo might work but it would take a seriously good story.

Spider-Man 3 would've been good if it had just Harry Osborn and Venom. Sandman had nice sfx but he was just a grunt. Another problem that had nothing to do with the villains with the Peter-MJ dynamic which was really wearing thin in Spidey 3. I don't think a Vulture-Sandman teamup would've been much better than the movie we got.

I think the franchise should just end it here for now. There's no way a 4th movie will be any good and it could easily end up worse than the 3rd movie which I at least found entertaining even if it wasn't great. I don't want to see a Batman & Robin disaster.

dancingpolkabear-you are right on. i grew up in the sixties with spiderman.get back to the original villains.introduce these old,but great villians to the new generation.stay true sam.if you don't get what you want-walk away.let them find some subpar person to replce you.

they should just stop with the spiderman movies
3 is enough, adding more is just stupid and a waste of time.. ohh wait theres money to be made my bad

@ cpax

Thanks for finding that! ;)

The sad thing is that if Sony left Raimi alone and let him do the GG2, Sandman/Vulture story

A) Almost certainly it would have been a better more cohesive movie.

B) The villain for SM4 would have been OBVIOUS and he would have enjoyed more screen time because the GG2 arc would have been completed.

Idiots.

I'm not against Vulture, but I'd much rather see Lizard before him. I do agree with the studio about something. Vulture cannot hold his own movie. He clearly isn't the fan favorite villain. He doesn't scream "must see villain" to me either. And I struggle to see how he can carry a movie on his own. He's just not that dynamic a character. Kind of reminds me of how I thought Sandman could not carry a movie on his own. Thankfully we had the Harry story in SM3.

All of the really major Spider-Man villains are already gone, so why even bother trying to turn any of the other villains into a more complex character than they are in the comics? I really don't see how they could make Vulture, Mysterio, Electro, Scorpion, or any of the others a truly captivating character who can carry a whole movie.

There's good combinations they can use. Vulture and Electro, Vulture and Scorpion, Lizard and Electro, Lizard and Kraven, Mysterio and Scorpion......

Hell I don't see why Raimi can't just do what he was originally gonna do in SM3. He already wants to use Vulture, so why not bring in a villain like Electro who gets Sandman's role as the powerhouse who doesn't fully understand his powers until the third act.

too many characters in SM3? I hope you`re not still referring to "too many villains" are you? Man people it`s 2010 already haven`t you learned that spidey 3 did not i repeat did NOT HAVE TOO MANY VILLAINS. You`re being absurd 3 villains can work depending on the story and if not too lazy directing of course. May not have made sense for two of them to team up if one can take them on their own but if their both tooken down by spidey then it could make sense they don`t all have to attack him at the same time 3 villains seems to sound like 12 villains to you.

Wow, I didn't realize how big that post was I just wrote...
*Coughs and shuffles away

Honestly Sam Raimi should just walk out on this, he made Spiderman 1 and 2 and they were great movies, but its very apparent that Sony wanted to find ways to try to make even more money, even if it sacrificed the end result. By watching and fiddling around with Spiderman 3 against the director's wishes, they almost completely broke the whole "franchise."
I say franchise with quotes around it because they're running out of years where they can make Spiderman films, before they go back to Marvel again. And Marvel now has Disney backing them so it almost guaranteed that Sony will never see the Spiderman property again. Its almost like they just trying to squeeze every last bit of money out of the franchise before they have to give it up. They haphazardly tossed Venom into Spiderman 3, because they thought it would sell better. In the comics Venom is probably one of the most interesting and complex(in a good way) characters, yet in this one he was just shoved into the mix of all this other stuff happening, making him just act as another villain to add to line-up. Honestly if Venom is going to be in a Spiderman movie, he needs a large amount of screen time to explore the character and let audience understand him and possibly even care about him. Sam Raimi did this perfectly with Spiderman 2, honestly I believe we all cared for Doc Oc in a way by the end of the second. Making the audience care about the main villain is something rarely successfully accomplished in cinema, but there it was done perfectly.

Another problem which I'm seeing out of Sony is that they really don't understand comics well. Sam Raimi had carefully looked over the Spiderman comics and rich, well developed story/universe and pulled a lot of good elements from them. He did alter stuff, but for the most part his decisions made sense and created a great end product. However when Sony steps in and says "no" to the Lizard because it sounds like a ridiculous concept, them something is very wrong. First of all Raimi has managed to sneak in a nice build up to the Lizard with introducing his human version in 2 and 3, and it really could be a great ending to the Raimi Spiderman films, since right now there are huge signs of a reboot after this. In a way Dr. Curt Conners has real helped Peter out and a sort of relationship formed between the two. Over the films Peter has lost his best friend, been responsible for the death of his best friends father and his own uncle in a way, and done serious wrong to Eddie Brock. Having to go up against and of the few people left that he has bonded to in a positive way would be very interesting to see what happens to Peter as a character. Also Curt Conners is not a bad guy, since he is not himself as the Lizard, which makes for a very interesting villain. In my view though, Sony does not fully grasp an understanding of Spiderman to go through with any of this, and it seems that they refuse to give it any thought either.

They also do not seem to realize who they hired to sit again as director, Sam Raimi is a very well known and respected director, and its a lot harder for a studio to control an accomplished director. One hires a director such as this for their vision of the project, if Sony wants total control over the project then they should have hired a lesser nameless director. Sam Raimi's name stamped on the front of the Spiderman poster does not significantly help the movie sell better if thats what Sony after. His name is extremely well known among cult horror fans, but among the general blockbuster/normal crowd, only one or two director's names are known to them, Steven Spielberg being the biggest probably. It almost seems like they were really just after Raimi because of his camera work, which is always amazing. But since they've seen how he used the camera for Spiderman swinging, they could just copy him there and get away with little to no unique shots anywhere else since once again the "blockbuster" crowd will probably not notice it as well. Therefore I see little reason of why they hired Raimi in the first place if their intentions were to make their own Spiderman movie, not his.

Sam Raimi really doesn't need to take this and I'm sure many other studios would gladly welcome his aid and advice. Plus he's got the Warcraft movie he's directing later and he keeps promising Evil Dead 4 which would make his fans (such as me) scream like little girls with excitement (at least I would).

I`m so sorry you had to use Venom in SM3, Raimi.

@Julissa

If you've read any of the comics, then you know there is no scenario that is impossible to come back from. The Spider-Man books continually shift from being some of the best books in the industry to some of the worst, it all depends on the creative team. The movies are the same. Whereas, I think we all agree that the results of Spider-Man 3 were less than satisfactory, I think the right script and some good creative choices could make this the next Spider-Man 2. Perhaps Spider-Man will suffer the Star Trek curse, only the even numbered films will be any good. Time will tell.

Wow... the Vulture and the Sandman together would've made Spiderman 3 better than the first two, I was always a fan of the Vulture and I liked what Raimi did with the Spiderman franchise. I do believe that it was the studio that ruined the movie as most studios do to good storylines/ideas.
Seeming now that its becoming their way or the highway, I don't see Raimi making more Spidey films, even if he actually goes through with this one.
I don't see anymore successful movies coming from this franchise, especially now that they ruined it as a whole it will be nearly impossible to continue on where they left off.

@Packy

I just thought I'd mention it even though I knew Cameron's script was a huge leap.

I just hope if the movie can't be done right, they let it rest for awhile.

It doesnt bother me.
I want them to do it right.

Rob...it's "should have" and "would have", not "should of" or "would of". If you want to use the contracted form of these words, they are "should've" and "would've".

@stuntmanj

Man, I wouldn't condemn the Spider-Man franchise to James Cameron unless somebody was going to pay me all of the profits that the film would surely make.

I've read a version of his scriptment for the proposed Spidey flick back in the 90s, and it's a doozy. Most major characters names were changed. The dynamic between Peter and MJ was very sexual, explicitly even. On top of all that the origins for all of the characters were all sorts of out of whack, even more so than Raimi's films.

I love James Cameron like the next guy, but he should stick to his anti-corporation/anti-military films like: Terminator, The Abyss and Avatar. Cameron is at his best when his creativity doesn't have to contend with characters that have storied mythologies. Aliens 2 worked so well for him, because he could essentially do whatever he wanted with that franchise and not ruin it too much. Spider-Man, however; is a horse of a different color.

James Cameron always wanted to do a Spidey movie. Of course, he doesn't have to right now with Avatar being such a big deal.