No matter what happens with “Spider-Man 4” creatively or financially, the movie will prove to be a crossroads for the franchise. It could be the last hurrah for director Sam Raimi and stars Toby McGuire and Kirsten Dundst in the lead roles.
It could also be the last film where fans have a long wait for the next installment.
Sony Pictures would like to lessen the wait time between Spider-Man pictures (which interestingly has increased by the same factor as the number of the movie with each volume…the wait for Spidey 2 was two years, Spidey 3 was three years and Spidey 4 will be four years) and they’re prepared to move forward on the entries five and six in the saga with or without the involvement of the regulars.
The first step in the process is hiring a writer for the fifth and sixth installments. For that, Sony and Marvel Studios have chosen James Vanderbilt. If the name is familar to those of you who follow news of “Spider-Man,” you may recall that Vanderbilt penned the first draft of the next installment and produced a two-picture story outline that impressed Sony executives earlier in the pre-production process. Reports in Variety indicate that the new deal goes back to the original script Vanderbilt wrote, which is for a two-picture story arc for the famous web crawler.
And the trade paper reports that if Raimi, McGuire and Dundst leave the franchise after “Spidey 4,” that the new scripts could serve as a reboot for the franchise.
Sony has a strong desire to decrease the turnaround time for new entries in the franchise and wants to build on the world-wide popularity of the movies.
“Spider-Man 4” begins production next year and will hit theaters in 2011.
[…] with them even if the “big three” don’t return to the franchise. According to Slice of Sci-Fi: The first step in the process is hiring a writer for the fifth and sixth installments. For […]