God damn what a bummer.

According to the other news sites, he wasn't offered Goblin and didn't pass on it – he was in contention for the part but lost, and he was disappointed.

No fucking doubt. Sony did lose their goddamn minds.

I like Malkovich okay, but I wasn't really looking forward to seeing him chew so much scenery. Worked out for the better, I think. The Spider-Man series kinda bored me after the origin sequence in #1 anyway.

Raimi killed the franchise with Spider Man 3, which is an unwatchable train wreck of an awful film. Get over it. Any fan of SPider Man as a character should be stoked the Raimi regime is over, because it wasn't going anywhere good. Macguire and Dunst also completely missed their marks with those characters. Good riddance.

"Spidey's only as good as the people he's up against"—-Huh? There have been plenty of good stories where Spidey was up against nobodies. He's only really as good as his writers

Taylor Lautner as Man-Wolf. I'm calling it right now.

I like Malkovich well enough, but is anyone really disappointed that we aren't seeing Spidey trading punches with a decrepit old man?

Really?

That's a bit of a bummer. There's no way that wouldn't have been entertaining.

All I want is Rhino flipping a school bus. Is that too much to ask?

The Vulture sucks. Malkovich is cool, but without a complete and utter revamp of that character, it would be the suck. His back story is too similar to Doc Ock and he's not a good foil for the Spidey presented in the films. Also, the mascara dance scene in Spider Man 3 was stupid and lame.

..And thank god they scratched it. It was the exact same piece of shit that Spider-Man 3 was. And It turned out the fucking vulture was MJ's "real" dad. It was a trainwreck.

Quit blaming Raimi for part 3. everything wrong with that film was a result of stidio interference, and now that they've got someone who's going to follow orders it's just going to be worse.

Why does everyone suffer from this dellusion that the spiderman films we got were good? They were all garbage and Raimi and Co. painted themselves into a corner with it by part 3. Maguire and Dunst were horrible choices for those characters, and they played everything like they were made of wood.

Totally agreed. Maguire and Dunst were both awful. The only decent actor with a character arc in Raimi's series was James Franco as Harry. I'm all for a reboot without Raimi, Dunst, and Maguire. Raimi should return to horror full-on, while both Dunst and Maguire can suck it.

Didn't they already announce the 'bad guy' of the next film will be not a super-powered villain but a teacher child-molester? Isn't that the reason we're forced to endure a re-boot? Malcovich would've worked well, if they added a prosthetic nose and didn't have a metal suit for him to wear like Goblin's outfit. I'm hoping this'll fail so bad they crawl on their knees to Sam Raimy and we'll finally get a super Spidey film..Sandman, Mysterio, Lizard, Doc Ock –multiple bad guys!

Some comments here sound like they were written by 12 year olds. How did the Raimi Spider-Man movies suck? 1 and especially 2 are probably as good as a Spider-Man movie can get.

Hell I'd say that Spider-Man 2 is the pinnacle of the genre, yet to be matched let alone bested.

Oh, and people in charge of the site need to fix this awful authentication system…

Here's the real reason the Spider-Man series needed to be rebooted that nobody seems to get—Tobey Maguire is just too damn old to play the character anymore. Their way around this for the proposed Spider-man 4 was to have Peter Parker and Mary Jane married with a baby. Which would have been a mistake.

Here's the thing about Spider-Man as a character. Unlike Batman, Superman, Captain America, whoever—-he's someone who is always moving forward in his life. He's either graduating high school or college, getting a new job, getting a new girlfriend or whatever. But at the same time there's a ceiling on how old he can get, which is approximately late twenties. The problem with the Raimi Spider-man series is that they advanced the character too damn fast (finished high school 40 minutes into the first movie!) and hired an actor too old to play him for more than a few years without taking the character beyond the point he's meant to go.

I would have gone to see a Raimi Spider-Man 4, and it could have even been really good. But there's no way it could have been anything but a lame-duck epilogue to the series.

I see this reboot as a chance for Sony and Marvel to fix a lot of the mistakes the first series made that caused it to burn out so quickly, ie, no hiring 25 year old actors who are too old to convincingly play a college student halfway through the second movie. No rushing through the high school years—you can do three movies with this setting alone, if you get an actor under 20. And no pinning Peter Parker down to a single love interest, creating increasingly contrived situations to give their relationship drama and conflict.

Done properly, they can get nine movies out of the character, especially if they follow the Harry Potter/James Bond template and shoot 'em on a rigid schedule. Three set in high school, three in college, and three as a working adult. With this set up, you can still recast if need be, but you wouldn't need to do a full on reboot again for years and years.

I read Devin recommending Johnny Simmons for the part of Peter Parker, and maybe he'd be great, but at 25 he's just too old. You don't want to just cast someone who's the right age for one movie. Better to cast a little young and keep them around for awhile. 18 to 20 is about right, so Logan Lerman doesn't seem too bad to me.

Cool story, bro

In reference to comment #18: You say that having Peter Parker and Mary Jane would've been a mistake?? Dude, that's part of the storyline in the comic and it should've happened, even in the 3rd movie I think, but since it didn't happen, a 4th movie would've been more than appropriate for closure of some kind.. You all just remember 1 thing and it's probably been said before: For all the bitching about how bad SPIDERMAN 3 was, your all going to appreciate this movie ALOT more when this refuck, reboot of a perfectly good franchise flushed down the toilet after a Billion dollars was made on it, comes out.. And if SONY does have nerd reps that monitor sites like this for our feedback: A Big FUCK YOU to SONY for doing this Bullshit..

Have to respectfully disagree with #18. Tobey Macguire is about 35, and he looks younger than me. I'm 34 and I just stopped getting carded a year ago, which means most waitresses and store clerks figured I was about in my early twenties. Also, when I was in my late twenties I was often assumed to be a teen-ager by police, security guards, etc.

Overweight, tired looking people don't experience this phenomenon, but people like John Edwards, Tobey Maguire, and Leonardo DiCaprio look younger than they actually are. Hell, Mat Damon is almost 40. The only thing that let's us know Tobey Maguire isn't 27 is that we've been watching him in movies the last 15 years and we can look up his age on the internet. He could have done another Spidey movie to tie up loose ends – it would have been fine.

This age thing is dumb. They goe by how old someone looks, not how old they are. Maguire doesn't look too old. If anything, I have a hard time buying him as anyone in his 30s. And using that stupid thinking, Johnny Depp was way too damn old to play Dillinger as Depp is almost 50. And Gary Coleman was like 16 when he played an 8 year old. They go by how old they look, not how old they actually are. The studio most likely just decided to change because this would have been the 4th movie and that seems to close to coming to an end. That and starting new with new everything would cost less.

Pretty much agree with timmy, #22.

Also, if you guys thought that studio interference ruined Spider-Man 3, than we're in for a real whopper in the next one/re-boot, as the studio suits will basically be running everything and got a puppet in that guy, Webb, to prod around the set.

I foresee something on the quality level of Batman Forever or Batman and Robin with the next Spidey movie, minus the gay overtones I'm sure.

Daniel Day Louis as Kraven the hunter. Make it happen