Despite all films in their original trilogy making more money than last year's The Amazing Spider-Man reboot, director Sam Raimi and star Tobey Maguire never did get the assurance and longevity backing for their vision than Marc Webb and Andrew Garfield have received today. Sony Pictures
have announced release dates for the third and fourth entries in their new series. The Amazing Spider-Man 3 will open June 10th, 2016 and The Amazing Spider-Man 3 on May 4th, 2018. So with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 filming in New York now and coming next May, that's a new Spider-Man every two years up until 2018. Marc Webb then gets a fourth movie in the series that Sam Raimi never did. The good news of course is that this gives Webb and his team the golden opportunity to plan ahead to a degree that no comic book movie franchise has ever had before. It's already pretty obvious that they are building to a Sinister Six showdown with Spider-Man (Electro, Rhino and Vulture are all slated to appear in next year's sequel, with Rhys Ifan's The Lizard purposefully not killed off in the last film) and the fates of The Green Goblin and Gwen Stacy to be touched upon, plus Mary Jane Watson and Harry Osborne set to be reintroduced, and with three movies to come to tell these stories, they have a huge opportunity here to tell these iconic tales the right way. We wonder too if Sony and Marvel will manage to get around to agreeing a deal that would allow cross-pollination of characters between the series, the nutrients of which were so nearly seeded with that almost agreement to have Oscorp tower shown in The Avengers. At the end of the day a deal makes sense for both parties. Spider-Man in The Avengers 2 for an appearance from Robert Downey Jr in The Amazing Spider-Man 3 certainly makes sense for both parties... if both studios can get over their own egos and realise it makes more sense to help each other make more money than it does to compete or ignore each other.