Raimi Not Making Back-to-Back 'Spider-Man' Flicks

It's hard to knock nearly $3 billion in business worldwide, even with the less than satisfying Spider-Man 3, so you can't really blame Sony for getting the band back together for a fourth movie, even if the right move artistically might be to change it up at this point to keep the franchise from going stale. But, as it is, we've got Tobey Maguire and Sam Raimi and likely that Dunst girl, too. Raimi has been talking a little bit about the fourth film in interviews leading up to this summer's Drag Me to Hell, and Ain't It Cool News discovered a contradiction in some of the earlier reports about how much of a commitment Raimi, Maguire, and others are making to the series. "No one’s talked to me about making part five at this moment," Raimi said. "Right now I’m hoping to make part four." "That's all I know right now." The talk was that two movies would be shot back-to-back, but that apparently hasn't been cleared by Raimi. The good news in that is it could mean an Evil Dead movie before too many more years. Knowing how long it takes to mount a Spider-Man flick, starting, stopping, then starting again with two separate productions would be about four years, which could conceivably push the long-awaited Evil Dead movie to 2013 of 2014. This way, we might get one, say, 2012. As for where the fourth Spider-Man stands, Raimi contends it's still in the nascent stages.

"Basically we are talking about the story right now, shortly artists will come on and I’ll start giving them shots to draw. We are supposed to start talking to a production designer soon, so it will just keep getting larger and larger."

Let's just hope by "larger and larger" he's not referring to the cast of villains.