Posted on: January 5th, 2010 No Spider-Man 4 Next Year?

spider_man_3_09While Spider-Man 3 made a lot… correction, a heaping ass-load of cash at the box office, it’s almost unanimous that the film was disappointing… correction, a steaming pile of shit. Raimi knows it, Sony knows it, and the pressure has been on tenfold to produce a fourth film worthy of shelf-space with the first two films. But has the pressure caused a buckle in pre-production?

Though it’s not necessarily a new development  - IESB broke the story nearly a month ago – Variety is running an article today that affirms the indefinite delay of Spider-Man 4, which get this, is being referred to internally as Spider-M4n (oh Jesus). Script problems are being cited as the driving factor behind the hiatus. It’s no big mystery that those involved with the film can’t come to an agreement on which villain(s) should appear – Raimi reportedly wants Lizard, which the studio feels they can’t market, and the Vulture and the Vulturess (kill me) are obviously causing unrest in Camp Spidey.

Nikki Finke of Deadline Hollywood got her hands on this email that went out to the special effects crew of the film on December 11:

We were just notified that our schedule is pushing. We will NOT be starting as planned. I’m terribly sorry for this news, and I hope this email reaches you in time to find other options. We do not know how long we are pushing, and we will not know until mid-January. By mid-January, we will be told how long the push is, whether it be 2 weeks, 2 months, or something else. The studio has every intention of making the movie, but we no longer have a confirmed start date.

With no start date confirmed, it seems highly unlikely that Sony will have Spider-Man 4 ready for its planned release date of May 11, 2011.

While things aren’t looking good for our friendly neighborhood wall-crawler, take this as a blessing – the last thing we want is a film made from a rushed script. Let me remind you what happens when you shoe-horn in a major villain for the sake of appeasing the studio. It rhymes with Shvenom.

Besides, it’s not like we won’t have a fair share of marvel movies in 2011 with Thor and The First Avenger: Captain America hitting theaters.

Filed under: Movies, News, comics

4 Responses to “No Spider-Man 4 Next Year?”

  1. Adam Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 8:33 pm

    I wish for them to forsake the actual Spider-Man story and have Gwen Stacy come and kill Mary Jane, and then she makes Peter fall in love with her and when she finally has him where she wants him, she reveals that she’s not Gwen Stacy at all, but she is actually Uncle Ben! BOOM! Then there is a ridiculous battle at the end and maybe it somehow sets it up for the Captain America film.

    Just a few thoughts to help out if their having trouble with the script. No need to thank me.

  2. Ryan Ferrier Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 10:52 pm

    I’m sure that’s 10x better than the script in question.

  3. Ben Rankel Says:
    January 9th, 2010 at 12:30 pm

    I’m going to have to make comic book movies one day, ’cause no one else understands the characters and how to make the films.

  4. Malkovich Confirms Vulture for Spider-Man 4 « Giant Killer Squid - Film, Comics, News, Reviews and more Says:
    January 10th, 2010 at 11:18 pm

    [...] the wake of Spider-Man 4’s delay, John Malkovich, who has been rumored to be playing the Vulture in the next installment of the [...]

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