The reason why Sam Raimi never made ‘Spider-Man 4’
Stephen Norrington’s Blade often goes overlooked when it comes to undoing the damage done by Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin to prove that superheroes could still be cool under the right circumstances, but it was Bryan Singer’s X-Men and Sam Raimi‘s Spider-Man that took the genre to the next level.
The friendly neighbourhood web-slinger had been mired in the depths of development hell for decades, with James Cameron and David Fincher among the many names to have circled the project before lifelong fan Raimi accepted the assignment and knocked it out of the park before raising the bar further with the superior sequel.
Spider-Man 3 may have been the highest-grossing of his trilogy, but the reception was decidedly more muted, with many fans disparaging the threequel as the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull of comic book adaptations. Forcing Topher Grace’s Eddie Brock into the story wasn’t Raimi’s call, and he made that very clear, but it didn’t prevent him from signing on for a fourth movie.
Having been burned already by studio interference, it was hardly shocking that it happened again, with Sony boasting a repeated tendency to meddle in its most marketable properties. Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst were set to reprise their roles as Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson, with Dylan Baker finally due to pay off a slow-burning storyline by transforming from the kindly Dr Curt Connors into the Lizard.
Things were progressing so quickly that John Malkovich was locked to inhabit the mechanical wings of Adrian Toomes and his nefarious alter-ego Vulture, with rising star Anne Hathaway on deck to become the latest spanner in the works for Maguire’s title hero as Felicia Hardy, a leather-clad vigilante who develops an unhealthy obsession with Spider-Man as Black Cat.
It was all systems go until Raimi decided he didn’t want to do it anymore. Having been announced for a May 2011 release date, the filmmaker felt that he’d need to make serious creative compromises in order to meet Sony’s desire to guarantee Spider-Man 4 that spot on the calendar, with Deadline reporting that “story issues need to be resolved” before he’d be comfortable beginning production.
During an interview with Rolling Stone, the Evil Dead creator described his departure as “a very painful experience”, but he was left with no other choice but to walk away after admitting, “I didn’t think I could get that script to the level that I was hoping for by that start date”. Backed into a corner – and still smarting from the reception to Spider-Man 3 – Raimi opted to wash his hands of the franchise entirely.
Expanding on his thought process, Raimi would tell Moviepilot that “there was a deadline and I didn’t want to make something that was less than great”. Having acknowledged that he’d compromised too much on Spider-Man 3 acquiescing to Sony’s demands, working towards a guaranteed release date at the expense of making sure the narrative was up to standard was simply a sacrifice too far.
In the end, the series was rebooted with The Amazing Spider-Man. It was abandoned after two films and plans for an entire universe, opening the door for a third iteration with Tom Holland front and centre. Ironically, that would eventually see Maguire unite with both Holland and immediate successor Andrew Garfield in Spider-Man: No Way Home, which was released six months before Raimi made his own Marvel return in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
