Sam Raimi has made his unexpected return to the world of Marvel to take the helm of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and while we're excited to see what the filmmaker brings to the MCU, could he return to the Spider-Man Universe? The director helmed three movies starring Tobey Maguire's web-slinger, but never got the opportunity to return for a fourth.
That movie did have a release date, but Sony Pictures ultimately decided to take Spidey in a different direction by enlisting Marc Webb to reboot the franchise with The Amazing Spider-Man.
Talking to MoviePilot, Raimi shared some insights into why Spider-Man 4 never happened. "We had a script years ago and we were actively working in pre-production," he recalled. "It became a thing where there was a deadline and I didn't want to make something that was less than great."
"I thought I had compromised a bit on Spider-Man 3 and I wanted to really pay the audience back on Spider-Man 4 and make the best Spider-Man of all," Raimi continued. "And I couldn't get the script together in that amount of time. So I told Sony, 'I think it's best if you go ahead with your planned alternate Spider-Man storyline, because I don't want to let the audience down.'"
That compromise was being pushed into using Venom by producer Avi Arad, and we all know how that turned out. As for whether he would like to find redemption alongside Maguire by making a new Spider-Man 4, Raimi responded: "I didn’t think it was possible but after jumping back in with the Multiverse, I realized that anything is possible now so I’m completely open to it."
Now, we just have to keep everything crossed.
It's a movie fans want (perhaps just as much as The Amazing Spider-Man 3), and picking up with Maguire's web-slinger at this stage in his superhero career would be a whole heap of fun.