From 2002 to 2007, director Sam Raimi directed the “Spider-Man” trilogy starring Tobey Maguire. Initially, the filmmaker and the actor were to return for a fourth adventure canceled by Sony. Recently, some photographs of the pre-production of this fourth opus have just appeared online.
The trilogy Spiderman
At the time when Sam Raimi directs the first part of the saga Spiderman, superhero movies are not as popular as they are today. In 2002, release date of SpidermanSam Raimi is one of the few on the market to make superhero films, with Bryan Singer, who leads the saga X-Men (2000). Worn by Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe and Kirsten Dunst, Spiderman quickly met with great critical and popular success. Sam Raimi’s work is hailed by the press, and his feature film is twice nominated for an Oscar (Best Sound and Best Visual Effects).
Faced with this success, Sam Raimi stages two other installments of his superheroic saga (in 2004 and 2007). In all, his three films have grossed over $2.5 billion in box office receipts. Originally, Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire were to return for a Spider Man 4. The filmmaker had even written a script, in which the actor John Malkovich was to play the terrible Vulture. Finally, Sam Raimi backpedaled and abandoned the project, which was in the pre-production phase. Indeed, as he explains at the microphone of MoviePilot, he was afraid of directing a bad film. And since he didn’t want to disappoint the fans, he preferred to hang up:
I wrote a script a few years ago, and the project had started. But there was a time limit and I didn’t want to spoil this fourth installment, I wanted the audience to like it. I didn’t want it to be inconsistent with the third, and I wanted it to be the best in the franchise. But I wasn’t able to write such a good screenplay with such a time limit. I preferred to tell Sony to continue with their plan for a different Spider-Man, as I didn’t want to let the public down on that one.
Images of the Vulture
Yet this Spider Man 4 had something to dream about. The original cast would obviously have returned. Sam Raimi had planned to stage John Malkovich in the skin of the Vulture, Anne Hathaway as Black Cat and even Angelina Jolie in the clothes of Adrian Toomes’ daughter, aka the Vulture. The death of the latter would have pushed Adrian to become the winged villain that we all know. An iconic comic book supervillain who was eventually recycled into Spider-Man: Homecomingportrayed by Michael Keaton.
Recently, several shots of Spider Man 4 appeared on the web. These are photographs on the preparation of the design of the Vulture. You can see there clay models with the face of Malkovich and wing prototypes. Finally, Sony left in another direction after the departure of Sam Raimi, preferring to develop its saga The Amazing Spider-Man rather than entrusting the realization of Spider Man 4 to another filmmaker.
