Sony to reboot Spider-Man! Raimi, Maguire both out!

Holy breaking news, Spider-Man! Sony Pictures announced this afternoon that they’re moving ahead on the next SPIDER-MAN film….without Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire! The studio will instead be “rebooting” the franchise based on a script previously written by James Vanderbilt (ZODIAC). The fourth SPIDER-MAN film was suffering from some serious delays but as recently as last week, all sides seemed optimistic things would eventually work out. Apparently not.

Raimi’s steadfast denial to make a movie based on a script he wasn’t comfortable with (as he had previously done with SPIDER-MAN 3) led to the majority of the delays and Sony pushed the film back hoping they could come to a resolution. Without a compromise in site and realizing that Maguire would walk if they let Raimi go, they simply decided to go the reboot angle. Which, quite frankly, is foolish.

We’ll get to my editorializing later, but first, Raimi issued a statement on the news:

“Working on the ‘Spider-Man’ movies was the experience of a lifetime for me. While we were looking forward to doing a fourth one together, the studio and Marvel have a unique opportunity to take the franchise in a new direction, and I know they will do a terrific job.”

Very diplomatic Mr. Raimi but sadly I disagree. While have no inside track on the Vanderbilt script, what good can come of “rebooting” a franchise that has produced one very good, one amazing and one relatively shitty movie all within the past couple years? Tobey Maguire is still very fresh in people’s minds as Spider-Man. I’m sure Anton Yelchin, or whoever they find, will make a decent Peter Parker but it’ll be exponentially difficult for whatever new director they find to make this movie than it was for Raimi (and trust me, it was difficult for him).

In the end, I’m sorry it couldn’t work out for SPIDER-MAN 4 but if it hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been all that upset. I just wish Sony would just let the franchise rest a little bit before rebooting. Sadly there’s just too much money to be had.

So what do YOU think? Love it? Hate it? Who should star? Who should direct??