Well now, this is one thing that no one saw coming.

Let’s recap: last week, we discovered that Sony was halting production on Spider-Man 4 due to creative differences between studio executives and director Sam Raimi. This was taken as a very bad sign, but star Tobey Maguire assured all that this was only “part of the process” and the movie was still going to happen.

Now, out of nowhere, Deadline Hollywood is reporting exclusively that Sony has actually decided to completely CANCEL Spider-Man 4, and reboot the entire franchise. This means that Raimi, Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, J.K. Simmons, Bruce Campbell, and everyone else involved in the previous movies are no longer involved in any way. This also means that Sony will use a script from James Vanderbilt, who was hired to begin working on drafts for fifth and sixth Spider-Man, to start over with a brand new cast, crew, and look.

Click over to the other side to read the full press release from Sony!

Sam Raimi has been talking a lot of Spider-Man 4 with MTV lately. Recently, they discussed the topic everyone wants to know about: villains. As it has always been, there is still no idea who the villain will be, but it appears that they are leaning toward a few prospects. Raimi was also asked by MTV what the chances are that he would return to do Spider-Man 5 and Spider-Man 6, which are both being written by James Vanderbilt at the moment.

When asked about who may be in the mix for the villains, Raimi simply replied “I’m not allowed to say at this point,” which could mean anything, really. We all know that the most expected one would be the Lizard, which they’ve set up throughout the franchise, but there’s numerous other faces it could be — both liked and not-so-liked by fans. Some seem to think the best route would be for Carnage to be the villain, and have that carry over to the Venom spinoff movie that’s planned, but considering Venom is supposed to be a clean slate spinoff, it’d be much better if Carnage was saved for that project alone.