It’s hard not to wonder what Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 4 would have been like. I was a big fan of his Spider-Man movies, and I was excited when he was actually developing a fourth film, which would have seen John Malkovich as The Vulture. It would have been the first live-action debut of the villainous Marvel character.
The script for Spider-Man 4 was complete, the writers spent over a year developing it, and it even had a release date! Malcovich even confirmed his role as The Vulture, and about 24 hours after that, the project was scrapped. It’s crazy how close the film was to getting made!
We never really got to see any costumes for the movie, but they were being developed and today we have a cool photo to share with you showing off The Vulture’s wings and you can check those out below!
Before Tobey & Sam were bid adieu by Sony, work actually had begun on SPIDER-MAN 4, and I visited friends who were working on the Vulture’s costume intended for actor John Malkovich. Once production shut down, all materials were turned in. I’ve sat on this for almost 15 years. pic.twitter.com/iY3VmzUrHI
— Ken Penders (@KenPenders) November 28, 2022
When previously talking about the version of The Vulture we would have seen in the movie, storyboard artist Jeffrey Henderson explained:
“The thing we kept coming back to was that, as a character, everyone was going to dismiss the Vulture as just an old guy in a silly green suit. So we wanted to go the opposite way and really make him the most fearsome and formidable adversary that Spider-Man had faced in the series.”
On top of that, Anne Hathaway was set to play The Vulturess, which would have been an interesting new version of Felicia Hardy/Black Cat. Raimi also wanted to reportedly cast Bruce Campbell in the role of Mysterio. It was explained: “It would’ve been part of a beginning of the film montage featuring a montage of C and D- list villains that we knew would never be used as main antagonists: Mysterio, the Shocker, the Prowler, the old school-onesie-wearing version of the Rhino, maybe even the Stilt Man, etc.”
As for why the movie didn’t happen, Raimi previously explained in a breakdown of why the film fell apart:
“It really was the most amicable and undramatic of breakups: It was simply that we had a deadline and I couldn’t get the story to work on a level that I wanted it to work. I was very unhappy with Spider-Man 3, and I wanted to make Spider-Man 4 to end ona 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.’ And Amy Pascal said, ‘Thank you. Thank you for not wasting the studio’s money, and I appreciate your candor.’ So we left on the best of terms, both of us trying to do the best thing for fans, the good name of Spider-Man, and Sony Studios.”
This is one of those great “what if it got made” film projects. It’s a shame that it never happened, but Raimi did get to work on another Marvel film with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and maybe one day he’ll get to work on another Spider-Man film!