In order to reach the May 6th 2011 dead­line release date for Spider-man 4, as much as pos­si­ble must be ready in time for the first pro­duc­tion day, as per usual, this means that the David Lindsay-Abaire penned script should be com­pleted by the end of sum­mer 2009, ‘about three months’ to be more pre­cise. SciFi wire also quizzed Raimi about poten­tial vil­lains for the fourth movie, but he declined to comment.

“We have to make the release date, and on all of these pic­tures, the ‘Spider-Man’ films–and I’m sure it’s the same as with many of the other bigger-budgeted films–they have release dates far in advance of a screenplay/ […] So it’s about get­ting it ready the best you can in time for the first day of pro­duc­tion. That’s what we’ve always done, and that’s what we’ll try to do again.”

“I’m not at lib­erty to dis­cuss the vil­lains yet. […] I think I have to wait till the fin­ished screen­play, and then it’d really be up to Sony Pic­tures and the pro­duc­ers to deter­mine when they want to release that infor­ma­tion. To them, it’s usu­ally a big, a big, big thing, a big moment where they want to present the vil­lain with the proper respect or fear that he or she deserves.”

Raimi has also spo­ken out about the cre­ative power he would like to wield for the next movie. This comes after the third movie whereby pre­sum­ably the stu­dio took over some of the cre­ative deci­sions (is that per­haps what lead to the crazy danc­ing Peter Parker scene?), via Empire:

“They really gave me a tremen­dous amount of con­trol on the first two films, actu­ally. […] But then there were dif­fer­ent opin­ions on the third film and I didn’t really have cre­ative con­trol, so to speak.

The best way for me to move for­ward on films, is that I’ve got to be the sin­gu­lar voice that makes the cre­ative choices on the film. I love Spider-Man so much that I’d like to con­tinue telling Spider-Man sto­ries. But only under those cir­cum­stances where I think I can hon­our him.”