Spider-Man 4 Was in the Works, Had Multiple Villains

Director Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, which starred Tobey Maguire as the wall-crawler, had a fourth film planned. However, we got Andrew Garfield in The Amazing Spider-Man five years after Spider-Man 3 instead. Work on the fourth film had progressed, though, and we can now see what might have been, thanks to storyboards released by artist Jeffrey Henderson. You can see a couple in the gallery below and the rest over at Henderson's website.

Gallery

The storyboards reveal the movie's villains as the Vulture and Mysterio, though Henderson told io9 that the latter villain was floated as Bruce Campbell's cameo--Campbell and Raimi worked together on The Evil Dead (1981), and Campbell made a cameo appearance in each of the three Spider-Man movies. Henderson said that it would have been a part of a montage at the beginning of the film, which would show Spider-Man dealing with "C and D-list villains" like the Shocker, Prowler, and "the old school, onesie-wearing Rhino."

The Vulture would go on to be Spider-Man 4's main villain, though Henderson said Raimi had some ideas to reinvent and modernize the character.

"The thing we kept coming back to was that, as a character, everyone was going to dismiss the Vulture as just an old guy in a silly green suit," Henderson explained. "So we wanted to go the opposite way and really make him the most fearsome and formidable adversary that Spider-Man had faced in the series."

Alas, Spider-Man 4 was not to be, and we unfortunately don't know why it was cancelled. The only way to see Spider-Man in theaters these days is in Captain America: Civil War and the upcoming Spider-Man: Homecoming, which releases in summer 2017.

Your friendly neighborhood web-slinger is played by Tom Holland in both of the aforementioned movies. He'll be joined by Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man and reportedly Michael Keaton as the villain. Additionally, Captain America actor Chris Evans has said that he would also like to appear in the film.

Spider-Man movie rights are owned by Sony, though Marvel president Kevin Feige has said that Homecoming is under the comic book company's complete creative control.

If you want to learn more about Tom Holland's Spider-Man, you can read "10 Things We Learned About the New Spider-Man From Civil War."