New Spider-Man 4 Casting News | SPIKE

For awhile we'd been hearing that the main villain for Spider-Man 4 was going to be the Lizard, the arch-villain embodiment of Dr. Curt Conners, played by Dylan Baker. Unfortunately for everyone, this isn't the case, as a much lamer villain has been selected in his stead.

The breaking news is that both John Malkovich and Anne Hathaway are being vetted by Sony executives to play the Vulture and his daughter, the Vulturess, a father/daughter bad guy duo. What, you might be asking, is the Vulture's superpower? His superpower is a flying harness that allows him to fly and use his wings to fight Spider-Man. Apparently Puff the Magic Dragon wasn't available to be in the movie, nor were any of the Care Bears or their Cloud Cars.

Here's what's being reported by Movieline:

Movieline has confirmed with sources close to the film that Raimi’s sequel is circling John Malkovich and Anne Hathaway to play Spider-Man’s adversaries, and neither evildoer is quite what you might have expected. ...As much as it would seem that the series is setting up his eventual transformation into supervillain the Lizard, we hear that the suits simply can’t bring themselves to sign off on such an odd-looking enemy — instead, they’d rather hew closer to villains with a human face.

Right, we wouldn't want any odd-looking enemies. Like, say, Venom, or Doc Ock, or anyone who might actually be interesting. The Vulture seems like the kind of villain even Batman would sub-contract out to the local social services to deal with.

Nonetheless, the rumors seem to be fast and loose on Spider-Man 4, so we'll just have to wait and see what actually comes to fruition. Until Sam Raimi actually makes an announcement it's hard to put too much stock in this, even if it does have sources close to the film.

What are your thoughts? Would you rather see the Lizard or the Vulture and his sexy daughter take on Spider-Man in the next installment?

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