Spider-Man 4

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About

Spider-Man 4 refers to an infamously canceled film directed by Sam Raimi. The film was meant to be a direct sequel to Raimi's Spider-Man 3 and would have been released in 2011. However, instead of producing the film, Sony Pictures canceled the Raimi movie and instead rebooted the Spider-Man franchise.

Online History

In September 2008, roughly one year after the release of Spider-Man 3, star Tobey Maguire and director Sam Raimi signed on for Spider-Man 4. At the time, it was rumored the villain would be the character the Lizard played by Dylan Baker, who had portrayed Dr. Curt Connors in the previous Sam Raimi Spider-Man films.^[1]

However, after disagreements between Raimi and the studios continued to push the film back, the film was ultimately scrapped.

Raimi later set of the film:^[4]

I was very unhappy with Spider-Man 3, and I wanted to make Spider-Man 4 to end on a very high note, the best Spider-Man of them all. But I couldn’t get the script together in time, due to my own failings, and I said to Sony, "I don’t want to make a movie that is less than great, so I think we shouldn’t make this picture. Go ahead with your reboot, which you’ve been planning anyway."

Storyboards

In 2016, storyboard artist released several never-before-seen storyboards and concept art from the film.^[2] The illustrations showed Spider-Man facing off against the villains The Vulture and Mysterio, who would later appear in Marvel's Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home, respectively.

J.J. Abrams Comic Teaser

On June 16th, 2019, the official Marvel Twitter ^[3] account posted an image of a number 4 written in webbing spun by a spider. The post received more than 66,000 likes and 16,000 retweets in less than one week (shown below).

Many online, believed the post to be a teaser for a comic-book adaptation of Raimi's canceled film. "Spider-Man 4" soon began trending on Twitter as fans tweeted various jokes about Marvel and Maguire making the film happen (examples below).

However, as the week continued, it became apparent that the number 4 was the first part of a countdown (examples below, left and right).

On July 20th, Marvel posted a reveal for the countdown, announcing a Spider-Man comic book series written by director J.J. Abrams and his son Henry. The post received more than 105,000 views on YouTube.

The response to the reveal was largely negative. Twitter^[5] user @ManaByte tweeted a GIF of comedian Chris Farley going from happy to angry with the caption "When Spider-Man fans think Marvel is giving them Raimi, but they get JJ Abrams instead." The tweet received more than 2,100 likes and 235 retweets in 24 hours (shown below, left). Twitter^[6] user @jackcox997 tweeted an image from Spider-Man 2 with the caption "When Marvel start the #SpiderMan countdown at 4, teasing a Raimi Spider-Man 4 comic… But then it's just a JJ Abrams mini series" (shown below, right).