BREAKING NEWS: Spider-Man 4 Scrapped. Sam Raimi & Tobey Maguire & Cast Fired. New Spider-Man Reboot Happening in 2012.

Here’s one that’s come out of left field. Only hours after we reported that John Malkovich says he will play the Vulture in Spider-Man 4, it looks like a meeting that took place today on the lot of Sony Pictures has changed all that.

According to the website Deadline.com, Sam Raimi told Sony Pictures that he could not meet the summer 2011 release date and has pulled out of the movie. As a result, Sony pictures has decided they are going to move ahead with a new director and a completely new cast along with a script from Jamie Vanderbilt. They will target a Summer of 2012 release date for the franchise reboot.

In the end, this means no Sam Raimi, no Tobey Maguire, no Kirsten Dunst, no John Malkovich and probably no Bruce Campbell.

Here are some excerpts from the official Sony press release:

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.

The new chapter in the Spider-Man franchise produced by Columbia, Marvel Studios and Avi Arad and Laura Ziskin, will have a new cast and filmmaking team.

The studio says it will release more news about the 2012 Spider-Man film in the coming weeks.

Source: EmpireMovies