Cinematical reports that Zodiac writer Jams Vanderbilt has turned in his Spider-Man 4 script… and it encompasses enough material to be Spider-Man 4 and 5. According to their source, Sony is all but ready to move ahead on the films, shooting them back to back.
I guess everybody hates Spider-Man now or something; I understand that Spider-Man 3 was not the film it could have been (I still like it quite a bit), but if you’re down on future Spidey films because of a fucking dance number (which was absolutely great, and a highlight of the film for intelligent movie lovers), get stuffed. I’m no lover of endless sequelization, but comic book characters lend themselves to infinite franchising – this is their natural state of being – so as long as the scripts are good and the budgets remain high, I see no reason that the Spider-Man series shouldn’t go 10 films. Plus, Spider-Man is my hands down favorite comic book character, so I would love to see more of his adventures and villains hit the big screen.
The question, of course, is who would be making these supposed back to back films. Sam Raimi hasn’t written it off, and since he didn’t get The Hobbit he suddenly has the next half decade free. Tobey Maguire has been reluctant to keep returning to the role in the past, but it isn’t like he’s been setting Hollywood aflame with his exciting projects in the last year; ditto for Kirsten Dunst. In fact, shooting two films back to back might be attractive to the principals: they get paid for two movies but only have to make one, albeit a long one.
Of course Spider-Man scripts go through many, many permutations. While Sony is excited to continue the franchise, there’s been no hard date set, so Vanderbilt’s massive tome may yet get major rewrites, possibly from a number of people. They at least have to give Alvin Sargent one pass before he himself passes.