Is there a more anticipated superhero movie than 2026's Spider-Man 4? It's certainly generating a greater number of headlines than any other upcoming comic book adaptation, and many of those are rumours about the Spider-Man: No Way Home follow-up's plot and characters.
It started with rumblings about an appearance from Paul Rudd's Scott Lang. Soon after, the rumour mill churned out the promise of a street-level adventure supposedly about Spider-Man and Daredevil taking on Mayor Wilson Fisk (a.k.a. the Kingpin of Crime).
Last year's WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes may have changed things, with Daredevil: Born Again's creative overhaul pushing the Disney+ series' premiere to next March. If season 2 was ever meant to lead directly into Spider-Man 4, it's now going to be extremely difficult to release that before July 2026 when production doesn't begin until early 2025.
When Venom: The Last Dance's final trailer was released and offered a glimpse of Knull, it didn't take long before the King in Black was reported to be Spider-Man 4's big bad. We were also told that Tom Holland's Spidey would finally share the screen with Tom Hardy's Venom.
This month, Kraven the Hunter bombed and Sony pulled the plug on its Marvel Universe (the Venom threequel was also far from a runaway success), making those claims somewhat hard to buy into.
We should also point out that there have repeatedly been claims about Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's Spider-Men showing up as part of this supposedly Multiversal adventure.
The past 24 hours have seen the movie undergo another apparent evolution as it's said Spider-Man will team with Ghost Rider to battle Mephisto. In the comics, that villain takes Peter and MJ's marriage in exchange for saving his Aunt May's life. Adding further fuel to that fire - pun intended - was Spider-Man 4's production company reportedly being titled "Blaze Films, Inc."
As we write this, it looks like we can expect Daredevil, Symbiotes, and Mephisto, so what exactly is this movie going to be?!
According to scooper @MyTimeToShineH, "[It's] worth noting that the Spider-Man 4 script is currently being rewritten, so anything you hear right now doesn't really matter."
"Also, Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 is set to film from March through late summer, around the same time as Spider-Man 4. If Daredevil does appear, it’ll likely be a small role at best," she adds.
The Comic Circus' Alex Perez has also weighed in to say that the report "[offers] a lot tidbits and insight at what has essentially been the rollercoaster of emotion of developments that this film has." In other words, all those things might have been true at one time or another with every single one of those characters potentially considered.
However, it doesn't mean we're going to see all of them in Spider-Man 4. So, as fun as it is to sift through (and indeed report on) rumours, until Marvel Studios chimes in or we get some casting news from the trades, there's no way of knowing what's heading our way in 2026.