Fifteen years ago, on March 12, 2009, Sony Pictures announced that Spider-Man 4 would be hitting theaters on May 6, 2011. Now, I don’t know if you’re aware, but that didn’t happen. Instead, the Sam Raimi/Tobey Maguire series fizzled with Spider-Man 3, and Sony rebooted with Andrew Garfield before rebooting again with Tom Holland. Still, rumors of Spider-Man 4 have persisted over the decade and change… However if they do ever go forward, Kirsten Dunst might not be interested.
“I don’t think we need that,” Dunst told IndieWire while doing press for this weekend’s Civil War. “I don’t know. It was so long ago. I just don’t know how they would, what the story would be.”
As for that story, the fourth iteration of the series went into development back in 2007, and it reportedly went through various permutations before getting scrapped. Maguire, Dunst, and Raimi were always attached as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Mary Jane Watson, and director, respectively. But at certain times they were planning on filming Spider-Man 4 and Spider-Man 5 back to back. At others, just the single film.
Various villains were considered, too. Dylan Baker’s Curt Connors could have gotten upgraded to The Lizard, something teased in previous films. John Malkovich was rumored to be up for The Vulture, while Anne Hathaway might have been Black Cat (and later she played Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises). Kraven the Hunter, Bruce Campbell as Mysterio, and other villains were considered, too, but ultimately despite development work the film never happened.
Spider-Man: No Way Home Amped Up Calls For Spider-Man 4
Naturally, the return of Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man: No Way Home amped things back up a bit, with fans asking/demanding that both he and Andrew Garfield get continuations of their respective series. In various prior interviews, Maguire, Dunst, and Raimi all seemed open to the possibility. But, and I say this as someone who has done hundreds of interviews: speculative questions like this are dumb because 99% of the time nobody is gonna be like “No, I don’t like having a job. Pass.”
However, Dunst seemed to shut things down more conclusively in this more recent interview.
“It would really depend on the script,” Dunst continued, and also, I don’t know, you’re really putting yourself out there in a way that … let’s maybe leave things when they were good.”
There, that should stop people from asking her this question. Case closed.
