Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 4 fell apart for a variety of reasons and was ultimately replaced by 2012 reboot, The Amazing Spider-Man. The plan had been for John Malkovich to play The Vulture, with Anne Hathaway set to star as Black Cat (though there had been somewhat bizarre rumblings about her being Adrian Toomes' daughter and suiting up as "Vulturess").
Following Tobey Maguire's return as Peter Parker in Spider-Man: No Way Home, fans are hoping Raimi - who helmed this year's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - could one day make the movie.
Talking in new book, Great Power: How Spider-Man Conquered Hollywood During The Golden Age of Blockbusters, storyboard artist Jeffrey Henderson shed some light on original plans for Spider-Man 4. He explained that The Vulture was a government contractor who did all manner of dirty jobs on their behalf.
As for where the name came from, it would have been because "he didn't leave anything but bones behind" after his jobs.
To drive home what a formidable villain Toomes was, it's said that we'd have seen him beat Spider-Man to the point of near death, making him fiercer than both the Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus.
However, it wouldn't have all been doom and gloom. "We were going to open the movie with this montage of all the villains we knew that Sam would never be able to use in Spider-Man movies," Henderson explains. "Because Peter, now that MJ has gone, he has finally made peace, and he loves being Spider-Man. He's actually enjoying it."
"So we were going to try to do The Shocker, Mysterio, Stilt-Man, and that kind of stuff."
We're not sure what happened to Mary Jane Watson, though it's safe to assume things didn't work out for them after Spider-Man 3. It would have been a blast seeing all those B-List bad guys in action, though Spider-Man: Far From Home made it clear that Quentin Beck had the potential to be more than just a throwaway villain.
Would you guys like to see this version of Spider-Man 4 revisited in some way?