John Malkovich Was Supposed To Play The Most Horrifying Villain In Raimi’s Spider-Man 4
The face-off between John Malkovich and Tobey Maguire was straight-up snatched away from us.
Back in the 2000s, Sam Raimi blessed us with three fantastic Spider-Man movies, starring Tobey Maguire as our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Fans were ecstatic when they learned that a fourth installment was in the works.
Sadly, despite the enthusiasm and plans surrounding Spider-Man 4, the project eventually fell through. Creative differences and production delays caused the film to be put on hold indefinitely, and the franchise took a different direction with the subsequent reboot, The Amazing Spider-Man series.
Now, the interesting part is that several villains were planned to appear in the movie, including: The Lizard (portrayed by Dylan Baker who already played Dr. Connors in the trilogy), Bruce Campbell for the movie's secondary antagonist, Mysterio, and most interestingly, Vulture, portrayed by John Malkovich.
Fun fact is that we eventually saw The Lizard and Vulture as Spidey’s main antagonists in two subsequent reboots: The Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man: Homecoming, respectively.
Even though Michael Keaton was amazing in the role of Vulture, just the idea of John Malkovich playing this iconic villain is mind-blowing. But there is some information about Vulture that makes it even more regrettable that we never saw this movie.
In Sean O’Connell’s book With Great Power, storyboards artist Jeffrey Henderson shared some details about Vulture. Apparently, Vulture used to be some government guy who did all sorts of shady things as a hired gun.
That's why they called him Vulture — he left nothing but bones behind after he was done.
According to him, if Vulture made it into the Spider-Man movies, it would have added a real horror vibe, which is totally up Raimi's style. We could have had potentially the darkest movie about our friendly neighborhood.
Last year, we also got a glimpse of what Malkovich’s Vulture suit would look like. Writer and designer Ken Penders posted a photo on Twitter showing the wings of Vulture’s costume.
Don’t get us wrong, MCU ’s approach to a modernized suit for Vulture certainly deserves praise. But these wings from abandoned Spider-Man 4 look more comic book accurate and yet realistic and dangerous.
Honestly, it would be one heck of a costume. It's such a shame the production of the movie shut down.