Tobey Maguire on his ideas for SPIDER-MAN 4 and the Production Delay
Back in December reports started swirling that Spider-Man 4 would be delayed indefinitely because Sam Raimi and the studio couldn't agree on a villain. Earlier this week the the reports were somewhat confirmed when the VFX team for the fourth installment sent out a letter saying that due to "story issues [that] need to be resolved before we are ready to shoot," there is no official start date. Apparently Raimi hated the script which had gone through the hands of screenwriters Jamie Vanderbilt, David Lindsay-Abaire, and Gary Ross. Spider-Man 2 and 3 scribe Alvin Sargent has been brought on to punch up a new script.
The studio still has every intention of making Spider-Man 4, still holding on to the May 5th 2011 release date, as of now.
Yesterday, Tobey Maguire had a chance to address the postponed production while doing a live Q&A for Los Angeles Times' The Envelope.
Maguire explained:
Like anything, it's a process. We're just in the midst of the process. We have a lot of great stuff in terms of story and script. We're just trying to dial it in and get it ready as quickly as possible. Of course, these movies are a very big undertaking and take a lot more time than a drama or something more straightforward.
Maguire also got a chance to open about his excitement and ideas on the character's progression and future.
Not only do I have specific ideas, but the ideas are evolving on the page. It's all happening right now. It's all sort of coming together. It's very exciting to me. I think the evolution of the character is really exciting, to be rooted in the history of what we've done already and to have a continuity, yet have a progression or evolution.
With all the arguments about the villains, it really comes down to, 'what's going on with Peter Parker?' The Dark Knight had multiple villains, Iron Man 2 will have multiple characters pitted against Tony Stark. The argument of too many villains or which specific villain they should use pales in comparison to the emotional progression of our web slinger. For me at least, with all that was wrong with Spider-Man 3, I wasn't truly down for the count until emo Peter started dancing.