Spider-Man 4 images show John Malkovich’s Vulture costume

There were more villains for Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man to fight across the Big Apple, a Marvel insider revealed years later.

Comic artist Ken Penders uncovered plans for the canceled fourth installation of director Sam Raimi’s mid-2000s “Spider-Man” film series. It had been dropped after the third film, starring James Franco and Topher Grace as the villainous Hobgoblin and Venom, was remembered for all the wrong reasons – including a chilling dance montage of Maguire’s Webslinger in 2007.

“Before Tobey & Sam said goodbye to Sony, work on SPIDER-MAN 4 had actually begun and I was visiting friends who were working on the Vulture costume intended for actor John Malkovich.” Penders tweeted of the future villain.

“After production was shut down, all materials were handed over. I sat on that for almost 15 years.”

Along with the shocking name drop, Penders also revealed an image of the monstrous mechanical flight suit the villain was meant to wear on screen.

in the a follow-up tweetHe showed the controls for the wings and “where John Malkovich’s body shape can be clearly seen”.

Though Malkovich has yet to make it into Spider-Verse, his Buzzard-like character — known by day as Adrian Toomes — finally got the green light a decade after Spider-Man 3.

Michael Keaton repeated the Vulture and feuded with Tom Holland’s Spidey during a battle royale across the skies of Coney Island in 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Keaton’s dark guise in the Marvel Cinematic Universe bears much resemblance to the concept outlined for Malkovich.

Alongside the classic Sinister Six nemeses, Maguire and Raimi also saw their own separate return to Marvel in 2021 – both of which had been warmly welcomed by fans.

Maguire teamed up with Holland and Andrew Garfield’s versions of the Webhead along with Benedict Cumberbatch’s Dr. Strange teamed up to fight threats across the multiverse – including Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin, Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock, and Thomas Haden Church’s Sandman, all from the Raimi films – in the 2021 hit Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Although this Holland trilogy was left in the hands of director Jon Watts, Raimi was credited for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, a sequel whose plot was intertwined with that of No Way Home.