Over a decade ago, filmmaker Sam Raimi was set to helm a fourth Tobey Maguire-led “Spider-Man” movie for Sony Pictures and at the time Black Cat, Vulture and Lizard were tipped as the villains in the mix.
However the lingering feelings he had compromised with the third film, and Raimi not being happy with the script for the fourth one along with an urgent deadline led to him pulling the plug on the project back in early 2010.
That happened even as screenwriter James Vanderbilt was tapped to pen a potential fifth and sixth film. Raimi advised Sony should make their alternate reboot script which led to the Andrew Garfield-led “The Amazing Spider-Man”.
Now back at Marvel with the upcoming “Doctor Strange” sequel, Raimi has been out doing press and recently spoke with Rolling Stone about what he had planned , saying: “I miss the really great cameo we had designed for Bruce Campbell.” He says the work on the scrapped fourth film was a very “painful experience” for him:
“I wanted to make a Spider-Man movie to redeem myself for that. [The aborted] ‘Spider-Man 4’ – that was really what that was about. I wanted to go out on a high note. I didn’t want to just make another one that pretty much worked. I had a really high standard in my mind. And I didn’t think I could get that script to the level that I was hoping for by that start date.'”
Asked about the rumor Campbell would play Mysterio, Raimi ended up revealing another classic Spider-Man villain was going to appear in one of the future films:
“That [Mysterio] was one of the possibilities. We had other things in mind, too, but that was one of them. And I missed Kraven the Hunter. We were going to work that character into the next ‘Spider-Man’; I always wanted to see Kraven fight Spider-Man on the big screen. I thought that would be really unique. He’s the ultimate hunter, and Spider-Man is like the most agile trickster of the skies. And I wanted to see Peter continue forward as a human being.”
Maguire reprised his role from the Raimi films in last year’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and there have been calls for Raimi and Maguire to re-team for a proper fourth “Spider-Man”. Raimi spoke to MoviePilot recently and said: “I didn’t think it was possible, but after jumping back in with the multiverse I realized that anything is possible now so I’m completely open to it.”
While the live-action big-screen future of “Spider-Man” is an open question right now, the character isn’t going anywhere with two animated “Spider-verse” films on the way along with the anticipated “Marvel’s Spider-Man 2” PS5 game due next year.
Raimi’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” opens on Friday.
