Sony Social Media Responds to Requests for Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 4

By Cameron Bonomolo

With great power must come great tweet-sponsibility. Social media lit up Wednesday when Spider-Man filmmaker Sam Raimi said "anything is possible" about potentially returning to direct Spider-Man 4, reuniting him with Tobey Maguire as the friendly neighborhood wall-crawler. Raimi, making his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, inadvertently ignited a tweetstorm when he told Fandango that the Multiverse makes many things possible — even a 15-plus-years-later sequel to 2007's Spider-Man 3. But don't tweet at @Sony: the official social account for the conglomerate is reminding tweeters it doesn't have the great power to greenlight​ a Spider-Man 4.

"well this has been fun for our mentions today," @Sony tweeted Wednesday in response to Raimi's viral reaction to a hypothetical Spider-Man 4. "friendly reminder, we're just the social team!" 

Asked about returning to the Spider-Verse after Maguire came out of Spidey retirement​ in Marvel Studios and Sony's Spider-Man: No Way Home, Raimi told Fandango, "I've come to realize after making Doctor Strange that anything is possible, really anything in the Marvel universe, any team-ups.

"I love Tobey. I love Kirsten Dunst," Raimi said of his Spider-Man stars, who played Peter Parker and Mary Jane across three films between 2002 and 2007. "I think all things are possible. I don't really have a story or a plan. I don't know if Marvel would be interested in that right now. I don't know what their thoughts are about that. I haven't really pursued that. But it sounds beautiful. Even if it wasn't a Spider-Man movie, I'd love to work with Tobey again, in a different role."

Raimi developed a fourth Spider-Man movie with Maguire and Dunst poised to return to their roles for a release date of May 6, 2011. Sony ultimately pulled the plug and rebooted, starting from scratch with Andrew Garfield replacing Maguire as a younger Peter Parker in 2012's The Amazing Spider-Man. 

"It really was the most amicable and undramatic of breakups: It was simply that we had a deadline and I couldn't get the story to work on a level that I wanted it to work. I was very unhappy with Spider-Man 3, and I wanted to make Spider-Man 4 to end on a very high note, the best Spider-Man of them all," Raimi told Vulture in 2013. "But I couldn't get the script together in time, due to my own failings, and I said to Sony, 'I don't want to make a movie that is less than great, so I think we shouldn't make this picture. Go ahead with your reboot, which you've been planning anyway.' And [then-Sony co-chairman] Amy Pascal said, 'Thank you. Thank you for not wasting the studio's money, and I appreciate your candor.'" 

"So we left on the best of terms, both of us trying to do the best thing for fans, the good name of Spider-Man, and Sony Studios," Raimi said. 

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange, Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff, Chiwetel Ejiofor as Karl Mordo, Benedict Wong as Sorcerer Supreme Wong, Rachel McAdams as Christine Palmer, and Xochitl Gomez as America Chavez, Raimi's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness opens only in theaters May 6. 

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