There was a moment in which the Spiderman film franchise looked to be possibly dead in the water, and seemed an uneven string of works for director Sam Raimi. The first film was good but flawed, the second film incredible; the third film left such a bad taste in many people’s mouths that it became hard to revisit the others. In the wake of The Dark Knight, it was even harder to look back, and I assumed the franchise was going to stall for years before a reboot.
I was absolutely incorrect. Not only is Raimi and co. gearing up for Spiderman 4 with attached writers David Lindsay-Abaire and Gary Ross, but a writer has been hired to start the ball rolling on Spiderman 5 and Spiderman 6 as well. It’s not known whether Raimi plans on staying with the series that long, but one name will: James Vanderbilt. Variety has stated that Sony Pictures found Vanderbilt’s ideas for the series so good that he was immediately signed for both pictures.
Here’s the weird thing: while Spiderman 4 has a release date and shooting schedule (production begins in 2010, with a May 6th 2011 release), Sony doesn’t even know if it’s going to return to the series after the fourth film. What’s more, Vanderbilt’s scripts may be used to simply restart the series instead of continuing the established one, if the fourth film doesn’t prove a success.
Time will tell. Vanderbilt’s a pretty talented screenwriter: while he’s responsible for Darkness Falls and Basic, he also has The Rundown under his belt (which was a whole lot of fun), and Zodiac, one of my favorite films of 2007. Hopefully his good ideas aren’t tarnished by the studio process that bungled up Spiderman 3. Fingers crossed.
