Spider-Man To Be Respun

If anyone had any doubt that Sony Pictures didn't get Spider-Man after their heavy interference in Spider-Man 3, we're about to remove all doubt. The studio clearly doesn't get why fans fell in love with Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 and have just meddled their way into a potential new disaster of super proportions.

The past few days have seen word that Spider-Man 4 was in bad territory - as in, the studio had their intended release date and were gunning for that regardless of the fact that Sam Raimi hadn't really started production on the movie. Add on top of that rumors that Raimi was once again facing a battle about the villains and storylines, and Spider-Man 4 was more-and-more looking like a bad idea.

The tribe has spoken. Spider-Man 4 has been voted off the island, as has Raimi, Maguire, and pretty much all the things that made the existing Spidey movies enjoyable. Deadline Hollywood brought an exclusive story to the web that Sony and Raimi's inability to see eye to eye led the studio to go in a new direction - the ever popular reboot. The move was confirmed in a press release by the studio today.

So, Sam Raimi is gone. Toby Maguire obviously won't don the costume anymore either, firstly because Raimi is gone (and Raimi was the leading reason the actor was going to do any of the sequels) and secondly because the new franchise will backtrack and put Spidey back in high school. Oh - and that troublesome release date has been pushed back a year, so this new Spider-Man movie will see screens in 2012... you know, when the end of the world is hopefully coming to keep us from this travesty.

Okay, I'm not going to be all gloom and doom about this. I always thought Raimi made an interesting choice jumping past Spidey's high school life so quickly, when so much of the heroes origins are set there. At the same time, there's a reason the character has moved beyond school for so long now in the comic book world - there's only so much you can do with the high school setting before it becomes old.

Who knows. Maybe producers Avi Arad and Laura Ziskin will come up with an equally successful and popular choice to lead the new franchise. But damn... Raimi had it. He knew how to take the character seriously and be silly at the same time. Almost everything that makes me love Spider-Man is evident in the first two movies, and when Raimi had to cowtow, we wound up with the lesser of the existing movies. I just have to worry about how limited a new team is going to be in making Spider-Man the success we all know he can be.