Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire On Board for Spider-Man 4?

On the down-low comes a report that all the speculation about recasting everybody in the Spider-Man saga can come to an end, because both Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire are locked in for Spider-Man 4 - and they still potentially want to film Spidey 4 and 5 back to back. They’ve got a script from Zodiac screenwriter James Vanderbilt, and they say “once you hear who the villain is, you’ll know who’s playing it.” This would very likely mean Dylan Baker’s Dr. Curt Connors finally gets his metamorphosis into the amphibious monster called the Lizard - and incidentally, you can bet J.K. Simmons’ Jonah Jameson will get some flak for such an uninventive nickname, or maybe he’ll push for The Leaping Lizard.

There was considerable debate about whether or not the mainstays would return after Spider-Man 3 got so much more flak than it deserved - Disco Peter was great, no matter what they say. A lot of that likely came from the fact that the Venom character was forced on Raimi and he seemed just as forced on film. If it wasn’t for that choice, we might’ve gotten Ben Kingsley as the Vulture, which would have been absolutely fantastic. With any luck, that can still happen - although no one would be opposed to seeing Bruce Campbell step into the role of broken-down special-effects guy Quentin Beck, who uses all his visual tricks to lead a life of crime as Mysterio. There’s room for more than one villain, especially if they’re stretching it into two films.