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Sony Owes It To Sam Raimi To Make Spider-Man 4

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Sony Owes It To Sam Raimi To Make Spider-Man 4

While Spider-Man: No Way Home is rightfully getting the plaudits it deserves, its popularity means Sony now owes it to Sam Rami to make Spider-Man 4.

Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Spider-Man: No Way Home.

The rampant success of Spider-Man: No Way Home means Sony owes it to Sam Raimi to make Spider-Man 4. With $1.39 billion at the worldwide box office to date, global audiences have flocked to see Spider-Man: No Way Home bring together three generations of Peter Parker and his respective nemeses to battle it out in the latest MCU installment. Yet the appearance of Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man, one of the most beloved iterations of the character to date, has reignited calls for Raimi to complete his Spider-Man 4 movie that was canceled back in 2010.

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Despite the lukewarm critical reception to many elements of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, the film’s impressive box office haul convinced Sony to make a fourth film. Development for Spider-Man 4 first began in 2008, with Raimi attached to direct and the core cast of the previous films to return. Just one year later, however, Raimi’s Spider-Man 4 was quagmired in development hell, with Raimi attempting four revisions of the script, each with a different writer. These narrative issues and lack of forward progress convinced Sony to cancel Spider-Man 4 in January 2010 in favor of The Amazing Spider-Man reboot, ensuring Raimi’s fourth Spider-Man project never saw the light of day.


Related: Tom Hardy’s Venom Movies Are More Like Raimi’s Spider-Man Than The MCU

Yet renewed audience appetite for all things Spider-Man means Sony would be wise to allow Sam Raimi to make Spider-Man 4. In particular, No Way Home‘s blockbuster reception has firmly thrust Raimi’s Peter Parker back into the contemporary consciousness, with Tobey Maguire’s return to the franchise met with a raucous reception. Here’s why Sam Raimi should be allowed to attempt making Spider-Man 4, as well as what his original movie would have looked like.

Why Fans Want Raimi’s Spider-Man 4 To Happen Again

Spider-Man being enveloped into the ever-burgeoning MCU has led to a sharp uptick in audience interest for the webslinger, with Tom Holland’s iteration of Peter Parker making prominent appearances in the record-breaking Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, as well as featuring in his own blockbusters Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Spider-Man: Far From Home. Spider-Man: No Way Home represents the current zenith of the character’s popularity in contemporary culture, with Jon Watts’ epic bringing back not one but three Spidey incarnations via the Multiverse. The reappearance of Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man has led to renewed clamor to see the actor reprise his iconic role as Peter Parker, particularly given No Way Home‘s ending, which leaves the door wide open for a revision of Sam Raimi’s classic Spiderverse (more on this later). The tantalizing prospect of seeing Raimi’s Spider-Man film series finally completed has prompted many to take to social media and campaign for Spider-Man 4 to be made by using the hashtag #MakeRaimiSpiderMan4.

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What Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 4 Would Have Looked Like

While Raimi’s Spider-Man 4 went through four rewrites, the film’s core narrative was still put in place during its stalled development in 2008 and 2009. Raimi’s fourth movie would have seen Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) and Peter try to reconcile their relationship following the tumultuous events of Spider-Man 3, while also portraying Peter attempting to deal with the death of his best friend-turned-Green Goblin Harry Osborn (James Franco). Another narrative reportedly set to unfold across Spider-Man 4 was Dr. Curt Connors’ transformation into the Lizard, after Dylan Baker’s Dr. Connors acted as a mentor to Peter in Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3. The small quantity of Spider-Man 4 concept art that exists in the public domain appears scintillating, with one series of sketches displaying an action montage where Spider-Man battles classic foes such as Shocker, Rhino, and Mysterio. Along with Mysterio, the Spider-Man 4 art also reveals the appearance of The Vulture as he battles Black Cat above the New York skyline, although details of how these two characters would be integrated into the film’s story remains a mystery to this day.


Sony’s Spider-Man 3 Meddling Means They Owe Him

Sam Raimi’s initial Spider-Man 3 plot was a far simpler affair, with Peter Parker set to battle Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) and the Vulture (who was cut from the script) while resolving his differences with an increasingly conflicted Harry Osborn. Yet Spider-Man 3‘s producer Avi Arad felt Raimi’s project needed more villains, particularly Venom, with Arad eventually convincing Raimi to add Venom as part of Eddie Brock’s (Topher Grace) storyline. Other Sony executives also chimed in with several ideas to introduce a competing love interest against Mary Jane, with Bryce Dallas Howard’s Gwen Stacy eventually added to fill the role of “the other girl” Sony executives wished to see.


Related: Why The Lizard Is Spider-Man’s Most Tragic Villain

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Raimi’s addition of Venom to Spider-Man 3 was done to appease Arad and the Sony executives, who felt Raimi had relied too much on his favorite Spider-Man antagonists from the comics as opposed to using popular newer villains audiences wished to see. Shoehorning Eddie Brock’s Venom transition, Peter Parker’s symbiote relationship, and a Gwen Stacy love story tease into an already packed script ultimately acted as a massive disservice to Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, with the final cut feeling bloated yet hollow in comparison with the electric narratives of Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, respectively. Sony’s powers that be meddled with Spider-Man 3 to such an extent that it shed the magic of Raimi’s previous two franchise entries – meaning Sony owe Raimi another bite at the cherry with Spider-Man 4 to right the wrongs his third installment created.


Could Spider-Man 4 Still Happen After No Way Home?

The good news for audiences hoping to return to Raimi’s Spider-Man world is that No Way Home leaves the door wide open for Spider-Man 4 to be made. No Way Home‘s ending confirms the existence (via the Multiverse) of three differing Spider-Man timelines that feature Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland, respectively. The Multiverse, therefore, allows Raimi’s fourth Spider-Man movie to be made without altering the canon or timelines of the MCU and Sonyverse’s Spider-Men, meaning Maguire and his co-stars are free to return to Raimi’s Spider-verse some 15 years after they last united for Spider-Man 3′s story. Leaving the Raimiverse as a standalone entity means Spider-Man 4 has a prime opportunity to be considered for revival, which is the very least Sony owes Sam Raimi after their treatment of his franchise installments in the late 2000s.


Next: No Way Home Finally Confirmed Uncle Ben Never Mattered In The MCU

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  • Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)Release date: May 06, 2022
  • Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)Release date: Jul 08, 2022
  • Black Panther: Wakanda Forever/Black Panther 2 (2022)Release date: Nov 11, 2022
  • The Marvels/Captain Marvel 2 (2023)Release date: Feb 17, 2023
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)Release date: May 05, 2023
  • Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)Release date: Jul 28, 2023


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Review: SAMARITAN, A Sly Stallone Superhero Stumble

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Review: SAMARITAN, A Sly Stallone Superhero Stumble

Hitting the three-quarter-century mark usually means a retirement home, a nursing facility, or if you’re lucky to be blessed with relatively good health and savings to match, living in a gated community in Arizona or Florida.

For Sylvester Stallone, however, it means something else entirely: starring in the first superhero-centered film of his decades-long career in the much-delayed Samaritan. Unfortunately for Stallone and the audience on the other side of the screen, the derivative, turgid, forgettable results won’t get mentioned in a career retrospective, let alone among the ever-expanding list of must-see entries in a genre already well past its peak.

For Stallone, however, it’s better late than never when it involves the superhero genre. Maybe in getting a taste of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) with his walk-on role in the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel several years ago, Stallone thought anything Marvel can do, I can do even better (or just as good in the nebulous definition of the word).

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The property Stallone and his team found for him, Samaritan, a little-known graphic novel released by a small, almost negligible, publisher, certainly takes advantage of Stallone’s brute-force physicality and his often underrated talent for near-monosyllabic brooding (e.g., the Rambo series), but too often gives him to little do or say as the lone super-powered survivor, the so-called “Samaritan” of the title, of a lifelong rivalry with his brother, “Nemesis.” Two brothers entered a fire-ravaged building and while both were presumed dead, one brother did survive (Stallone’s Joe Smith, a garbageman by day, an appliance repairman by night).

In the Granite City of screenwriter Bragi F. Schut (Escape Room, Season of the Witch), the United States, and presumably the rest of the world, teeters on economic and political collapse, with a recession spiraling into a depression, steady gigs difficult, if not impossible, to obtain, and the city’s neighborhoods rocked by crime and violence. No one’s safe, not even 13-year-old Sam (Javon Walker), Joe’s neighbor.

When he’s not dodging bullies connected to a gang, he’s falling under the undue influence of Cyrus (Pilou Asbæk), a low-rent gang leader with an outsized ego and the conviction that he and only he can take on Nemesis’s mantle and along with that mantle, a hammer “forged in hate,” to orchestrate a Bane-like plan to plunge the city into chaos and become a wealthy power-broker in the process.

Schut’s woefully underwritten script takes a clumsy, haphazard approach to world-building, relying on a two-minute animated sequence to open Samaritan while a naive, worshipful Sam narrates Samaritan and Nemesis’s supposedly tragic, Cain and Abel-inspired backstory. Schut and director Julius Avery (Overlord) clumsily attempt to contrast Sam’s childish belief in messiah-like, superheroic saviors stepping in to save humanity from itself and its own worst excesses, but following that path leads to authoritarianism and fascism (ideas better, more thoroughly explored in Watchmen and The Boys).

While Sam continues to think otherwise, Stallone’s superhero, 25 years past his last, fatal encounter with his presumably deceased brother, obviously believes superheroes are the problem and not the solution (a somewhat reasonable position), but as Samaritan tracks Joe and Sam’s friendship, Sam giving Joe the son he never had, Joe giving Sam the father he lost to street violence well before the film’s opening scene, it gets closer and closer to embracing, if not outright endorsing Sam’s power fantasies, right through a literally and figuratively explosive ending. Might, as always, wins regardless of how righteous or justified the underlying action.

It’s what superhero audiences want, apparently, and what Samaritan uncritically delivers via a woefully under-rendered finale involving not just unconvincing CGI fire effects, but a videogame cut-scene quality Stallone in a late-film flashback sequence that’s meant to be subversively revelatory, but will instead lead to unintentional laughter for anyone who’s managed to sit the entirety of Samaritan’s one-hour and 40-minute running time.

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Samaritan is now streaming worldwide on Prime Video.

Samaritan

Cast
  • Sylvester Stallone
  • Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton
  • Pilou Asbæk

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Matt Shakman Is In Talks To Direct ‘Fantastic Four’

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According to a new report, Wandavision’s Matt Shakman is in talks to direct the upcoming MCU project, Fantastic Four. Marvel Studios has been very hush-hush regarding Fantastic Four to the point where no official announcements have been made other than the film’s release date. No casting news or literally anything other than rumors has been released regarding the project. We know that Fantastic Four is slated for release on November 8th, 2024, and will be a part of Marvel’s Phase 6. There are also rumors that the cast of the new Fantastic Four will be announced at the D23 Expo on September 9th.

Fantastic Four is still over two years from release, and we assume we will hear more news about the project in the coming months. However, the idea of the Fantastic Four has already been introduced into the MCU. John Krasinski played Reed Richards aka Mr. Fantastic in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The cameo was a huge deal for fans who have been waiting a long time for the Fantastic Four to enter the MCU. When Disney acquired Twenty Century Fox in 2019 we assumed that the Fox Marvel characters would eventually make their way into the MCU. It’s been 3 years and we already have had an X-Men and Fantastic Four cameo – even if they were from another universe.

Deadline is reporting that Wandavision’s Matt Shakman is in talks to direct Fantastic Four. Shakman served as the director for Wandavision and has had an extensive career. He directed two episodes of Game of Thrones and an episode of The Boys, and he had a long stint on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. There is nothing official yet, but Deadline’s sources say that Shakman is currently in talks for the job and things are headed in the right direction.

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To be honest, I was a bit more excited when Jon Watts was set to direct. I’m sure Shakman is a good director, but Watts proved he could handle a tentpole superhero film with Spider-Man: Homecoming. Wandavision was good, but Watts’ style would have been perfect for Fantastic Four. The film is probably one of the most anticipated films in Marvel’s upcoming slate films and they need to find the best person they can to direct. Is that Matt Shakman? It could be, but whoever takes the job must realize that Marvel has a lot riding on this movie. The other Fantastic Four films were awful and fans deserve better. Hopefully, Marvel knocks it out of the park as they usually do. You can see for yourself when Fantastic Four hits theaters on November 8th, 2024.

Film Synopsis: One of Marvel’s most iconic families makes it to the big screen: the Fantastic Four.

Source: Deadline

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Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase Star in ‘Zombie Town’ Mystery Teen Romancer (Exclusive)

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Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase have entered Zombie Town, a mystery teen romancer based on author R.L. Stine’s book of the same name.

The indie, now shooting in Ontario, also stars Henry Czerny and co-teen leads Marlon Kazadi and Madi Monroe. The ensemble cast includes Scott Thompson and Bruce McCulloch of the Canadian comedy show Kids in the Hall.

Canadian animator Peter Lepeniotis will direct Zombie Town. Stine’s kid’s book sees a quiet town upended when 12-year-old Mike and his friend, Karen, see a horror movie called Zombie Town and unexpectedly see the title characters leap off the screen and chase them through the theater.

Zombie Town will premiere in U.S. theaters before streaming on Hulu and then ABC Australia in 2023.

“We are delighted to bring the pages of R.L. Stine’s Zombie Town to the screen and equally thrilled to be working with such an exceptional cast and crew on this production. A three-time Nickelodeon Kids Choice Award winner with book sales of over $500 million, R.L. Stine has a phenomenal track record of crafting stories that engage and entertain audiences,” John Gillespie, Trimuse Entertainment founder and executive producer, said in a statement.

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Executive producers are Trimuse Entertainment, Toonz Media Group, Lookout Entertainment, Viva Pictures and Sons of Anarchy actor Kim Coates.  

Paco Alvarez and Mark Holdom of Trimuse negotiated the deal to acquire the rights to Stine’s Zombie Town book.

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