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.

The whispers around town indicate that Spider-Man 4 writer Gary Ross is currently in discussions with Sony to write, and maybe even direct their planned spin-off movie, Venom. The movie has already had multiple drafts written, including one from Zombieland writing team Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.

Ross plans to finish up his scrip for Spidey 4 and then move right into the Venom project. All indications so far is that all things we’ve seen from the character will be thrown away, and that this movie will start all over again — including re-casting the role once filled by Topher Grace in the forgettable Spider-Man 3.

Cinematical is reporting that the rumored Spider-Man spinoff of the Venom character (Read: Sony Doing A ‘Spider-Man’ Venom Spinoff?) is now officially being developed by Sony Pictures.

Above and beyond the announcement that Sony is now officially developing the movie — the studio has also hired screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick to put a script together. Reese did some work on Monsters Inc. and both Reese and Wenick recently wrote the script for Zombieland.

Cinematical’s Scott Weinberg spoke to the writing duo and had this to say about their being hired: