Spider-Man 4: What Really Happened?

4. Spider-Man 4: The Problematic Script

Spider-Man 4
Sony

Plans for Spider-Man 4 would continue at a rapid pace. Sony were keen to make more and negotiations were well underway for the returns of Sam Raimi in the director's chair and leads Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst in talks for a fourth outing as Peter Parker and Mary-Jane Watson, respectively.

Maguire and Dunst had only signed a 3-movie deal and sadly for Sony their pay demands for fourth and fifth outings were particularly high (though Dunst has confirmed recently that she was paid less than her male co-stars). Rumours from the time suggested that Maguire was seeking $50m for the two movies plus a profit share deal on both movies and time off in early mornings and evenings to spend time with his younf daughter Ruby. That's a lot of money and time to sink into one star, let alone a group of returning ones.

To try and deal with that, Sony had tentative plans to shoot Spider-Man 4 back to back with a Spider-Man 5 over a six-month shoot to save costs and also making sure to get as much mileage out of Maguire and Dunst before they became too old to convincingly play these roles.

On the surface though, all seemed content and ultimately money and Raimi's new opportunity at delivering a fresh Spider-Man movie that would wash away the frustrations he felt with the previous entry had kept the proposal of a fourth movie on the right track.

But things just didn't go the way anyone had hoped.

Screenwriter David Koepp - who penned Maguire's first outing in 2002 - had been tapped to write the script for Spider-Man 4 but a writers' strike in late 2007 would soon throw a major spanner in the works and he reportedly hadn't completed the script in time.

Director David Koepp prepares for the next scene on the set of the movie
Seth Wenig/AP

Spider-Man 4 was in a difficult position. Talks with Koepp broke down and just mere days before the strike was due to take place - EW (via MovieWeb) reported that another writer, James Vanderbilt (Zodiac), had been hired to script the movie. He wouldn't be allowed to work on it during the strike (which ended in February 2008), but he could still think of ideas or draft loose concepts down on paper.

After the strike, Vanderbilt completed his draft, but then - in October 2008 - a different writer, David Lindsay-Abaire, was tasked with doing some script work on the project. It wasn't clear whether Lindsay-Abaire had been hired to rewrite Vanderbilt's draft or create one of his own, but with this being the third writer associated with Spider-Man 4 in a short period of time, the state of the project started to come into question.

Was putting together a fourth Spider-Man movie an impossible task? Had the creative justices of the Spider-Man character been left in disarray after Spider-Man 3?

Fans were starting to fear the worst as no release date for a fourth entry was forthcoming, despite having the cast, director and writers in place.

Toby Maguire Spider-Man 3
Sony

There was still more problems to come. In mid-2009, Hunger Games director Gary Ross was brought on to rewrite a draft of the script, something acknowledged by Raimi later that year (via MTV):

"He's working on a draft... I just gave him some notes and he's doing a rewrite right now."

Again, there was no clarity about whose script this was - was it Vanderbilt's? Lindsay-Abaire's? Either way, the movie still didn't have a finalised script after two years of writing, which is indicative of some major behind-the-scenes issues.

It was becoming more and more evident that the studio had its own ideas on what Spider-Man 4 should be, and Raimi had his. The two parties couldn't agree on a story, so they cycled through screenwriters trying to find a compromise.

Was fate striking twice here? Was Spider-Man 4 going the same way as Spider-Man 3?

Advertisement
Contributor
Contributor

WhoCulture Channel Manager/Doctor Who Editor at WhatCulture. Can confirm that bow ties are cool.