10 Things You Need To Know About Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 4

2. The Release Date Was The Same Week As Thor

One of the penultimate nails in the coffin of Spider-Man 4 is that Sony had set a release date of May 6, 2011, and refused to budge from it. Now studios have learned that shifting a release date isn't quite such a big deal as it used to be, not a sign that a production is in trouble or whatever it used to signify.

In 2010, though, they were not going to change for nobody. Part of that was because Marvel had already made a significant dent in the superhero movie market with the surprise smash hit of their first independent production, Iron Man. The Incredible Hulk didn't quite do enough to capitalise on that, but Sony were clearly worried about the Kenneth Branagh-directed Thor.

In the end Spider-Man 4 was cancelled, and Thor got pushed back from May 20th so it instead came out on... May 6th. So for a hot minute there, it looked like Thor and Spider-Man 4 would've gone toe-to-toe.