Okay, so this news annoys me for a multotude of reasons, all of them indications of some major flaws in todays film industry.
Spiderman 4 has been officially canned. Director Sam Raimi feels he cannot make the next summer release date and still "uphold creative integrity" so he has bailed and contractually that means Kirsten Dunst and Tobey Maguire are gone too.
Instead Sony are now planning a reboot of the series with a new cast and director.
These are my problems....
1. Artistic intergrity?? Did he even watch Spiderman 3? He had Peter Parker dancing down the street and hopping over chairs in a jazz club while supposedly being a badboy.
2. Rebooting a current and ongoing series just do they can shoehorn in a new cast? This screams of no confidence in what they are doing. Sony are panicking because the Spidey franchise farts money at them no matter how poor the film (the first three took $2.5 billion) and they want it to continue. Make no mistakes. Sony doesn't care at all about anything other than keeping the cash cow rolling.
3. Reboots in general. Just after Hulk was released they rebooted it. It was a reboot/sequel hybrid and made no sense of what was otherwise a good film. It wasn't needed in the form of a reboot and a sequel would have been fine. Superman Returns is due for a reboot. Why, when the last one was a great film and the cast played out their characters perfectly. Why are we being subjected to reboots of films that are only a few years old? Why the hell is Hollywood insistent of replaying stories to every new trend in filmaking that establishes itself every few years?
Pisses me off.
I say let the Spidey films die anyhow. They were all crap. Yeah i said it.