Spider-Man 4 to land in 2012... minus Raimi and Maguire

Spider-Man 4 seems to have at last resolved the issues that had threatened to scuttle the production before it even got started. However it has done so in the fashion of a doctor killing his patient to stop him suffering from an ingrowing toenail, with franchise director Sam Raimi and star Tobey Maguire both bailing out as parent studio Sony Pictures seek to rescue their flagship franchise with a reboot storyline, due to hit theatres in 2012.

Word surfaced last week that Spider-Man 4 was becoming an increasingly beleaguered affair, with production schedules slipping dramatically and the movie's proposed 5 May 2011 release date being reluctantly relinquished (it being swiftly snapped up by Spidey's Marvel Comics neighbour Thor). However, despite the slide, the unofficial line from Sony was that they were ploughing ahead with the storyline involving the villainous Vulture, with director Raimi being given the necessary time to groom the story to his satisfaction, following the narrative compromises he was forced to make when he delivered Spider-Man 3 back in 2007 (Raimi's preference was that Venom would not have featured in that movie). Screenwriter Alvin Sargent, who worked on parts two and three of the wall-crawler's cinematic adventures, had reputedly been parachuted in to revise the script, while (according to Slash Film) John Malkovich still seemed ready to step into the Vulture's birdy-suit. So while the May 2011 release date may have been ground into the dust of oblivion, a Raimi-helmed Spider-Man 4 looked set to barge into global multiplexes at some juncture in summer 2011.

But there have been major developments in the last 24 hours, with Deadline Hollywood (who broke the original production delays story) revealing that a meeting between Raimi, Sony Pictures co-chairperson Amy Pascal and Columbia Pictures' Matt Tolmach culminated in a number of fairly seismic decisions (er, seismic in the context of superhero film franchises, not so much in the wider world). The key points are that:

* Sam Raimi has departed the project

* The Vulture storyline has been abandoned

* Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst will not be returning as Peter Parker and Mary-Jane Watson

* The entire Spider-Man series will be relaunched with a new chapter that finds Peter Parker going all Rodney Dangerfield on our ass and heading back to school

The key problem apparently was that Raimi was unwilling to yield to a story which he was not happy with. Deadline quote him as telling the studio bigwigs that “I can't make your date. I can't go forward creatively.” With their helmer running up the white flag, Pascal and Tolmach made the call that it would be better to completely relaunch Spider-Man, rather than attempt to continue the Raimi chronology with another director calling the shots.

What has caused a few eyebrows to raise is that Sony had clearly planned for this contingency, with them already having a ready-to-go reboot script from Zodiac writer James Vanderbilt locked away in the studio vaults. Vanderbilt, if we cast minds back, was the first scriptwriter assigned to Spider-Man 4, before being succeeded by David Lindsay-Abaire, Gary Ross and Sargent. The opening paragraph of the press statement released yesterday by Sony outlines their revised plans for the franchise.

'Peter Parker is going back to high school when the next Spider-Man hits theaters in the summer of 2012. Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios announced today they are moving forward with a film based on a script by James Vanderbilt that focuses on a teenager grappling with both contemporary human problems and amazing super-human crises.'

Yea gods! Does this mean we get the origin story all over again? High school loser; radioactive spider; wrestling match; with great power comes great responsibility - that took like an hour to hack through in film one!

The statement also includes a few magnanimous lines line from the exiting Raimi.

“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.”

If he really means I pity the next poor sap they sink their talons into, then he's hiding it reasonably well. Emancipated from the bondage of Spider-Man, the director is now tipped to turn his attention to either an adaptation of the Dennis Lehane novel The Given Day, or his movie version of nerd-heroin video game World of Warcraft.

Following Sony's press release, Tobey Maguire put out his own statement, saying:

“I am so proud of what we accomplished with the Spider-Man franchise over the last decade. Beyond the films themselves I have formed some deep and lasting friendships. I am excited to see the next chapter unfold in this incredible story.”

Supposedly Maguire was happy to back his director, and would have returned had Raimi proceeded with the project. But he is reputedly equally pleased to step away from the franchise that made him a star now that the studio are taking Spider-Man in a new direction ('new' in this case seeming to translate as 'a complete rehash of a story that was last filmed at great expense and watched by a large chunk of the global population less than a decade previously').

The consensus seems to be that Sony's decision to reboot reflects a keenness to harness some of that magic Batman Begins feeling. Rather than push forth with an expensive sequel – which would be subject to the laws of diminishing critical and commercial returns that all fourth instalments seem to fall foul of – it is possible to discern the twisted logic in Sony hitting the 'End Task' button and starting Peter Parker off again from square one. Plus once comic book Spidey got his powers and started fighting crime, there was really not a heck of a lot of variety in that series. A huge number of issues could be summed up by a single panel depicting an angst-stricken Peter Parker, thought balloon emanating from his cranium, reading something like: Aunt May is sick, and I've got a term paper due tomorrow. And Mary-Jane is mad at me for missing our date because I had to stop Electro destroying Manhattan. When will things ever go right for me? Is this the price I must always pay for being Spider-Man?! Plus, the dude was at university from about 1968 till 1985, without ever graduating. Jeez, talk about a slacker.

Which does not mean that a Spider-Man 4, or Amazing Spider-Man, or Spider-Man Reborn!, or The Impoverished Imagination of Major Movie Studios in the 21st Century, or whatever the chuff it will be called when it surfaces in 2012 will necessarily be a welcome addition to the release schedules. But should Sony stick a vogueish young actor in the lead role, someone with a few vaguely indie credits, and should they attach a director with at least minorly fan-friendly chops - get those suckers out to Comic-Con to press the flesh and kiss a few backsides - then Raimi and Maguire will suddenly be as distant a memory as the pre-Spider-Man movie era when comic book blockbusters were the exception rather than the rule. And who can truly recall what the world was like in that age of unenlightened darkness?