Sam Raimi‘s Oz The Great and Powerful is hitting theaters this weekend, but long before the film’s production, the director was attached to direct Spider-Man 4 – which eventually got the reboot treatment directed by Marc Webb – and World of Warcraft – which eventually went to Duncan Jones.

During the press rounds for Oz The Great and Powerful, Raimi addressed those projects that got passed on or rebooted.

On the subject of Spider-Man 4, Raimi said that he just couldn’t hand in a proper script on time and that he wanted to end his Spider-Man franchise on a high note, especially after the way Spider-Man 3 ended. By the way that the relationship between him and Sony wasn’t as heated as some make it out to be, according to Raimi.

Talks of a Men in Black III have been showing up quite a bit as of late, and the project has been gaining a lot of momentum. Last we heard, the star that could make or break a third flick, Will Smith, was choosing between returning to his alien-chasing suit and shades and a much less-visible family movie called The City That Sailed set up at his production studio.

Nothing is official yet and this could change tomorrow, but if you’re to believe franchise director Barry Sonnenfeld, who spoke to Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman recently, not only is Smith coming back for this trilogy-maker, but he’s actually already signed on! Sonnenfeld also shared that another huge question mark, Tommy Lee Jones, is ready to come back as well.

It didn’t take Sony Pictures long to find a new director to helm their recently decided reboot of the Spider-Man franchise. The studio has hired relatively unknown Marc Webb to take on the new high-profile, high-risk, high-reward project after the realization that we had seen the best we could have seen from the former cast and crew. The script is written by James Vanderbilt, who Sony had writing multiple sequels.

Webb recently received critical praise for his work on the indie film (500) Days of Summer, which starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. Aside from that movie, Webb has only really done a couple of music videos for Green Day and 3 Doors Down. This makes him a bold choice for director, and it puts him in a massive position that could very easily make or break his entire career. No pressure there. And speaking of Gordon-Levitt, he seems to be the majority fan-favorite for the role of Peter Parker. The hiring of Webb makes this prospect a lot more of a legitimate possibility.

Continue reading for more and to read a full press release from Sony.

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!

As news spilled out recently that Spider-Man 4 was on an indefinite vacation, something of a panic seemed to arise from those who worried the movie was already destined for disaster. As far as we knew, it was just some script problems and issues choosing the right villain (a choice that could immediately make or break the movie for some fans), but something about the whole thing felt damaging.

While everyone else was running around trying to figure out what this means for Spidey, the star of the franchise isn’t worried one little bit. Tobey Maguire recently took part in a little web cam chit-chat with The Envelope, where he assured everyone that not only is this all just how things go with movies of this size, but that there’s actually a lot going very right as well.