After the infamous Spider-Man 3 movie, which was also directed by Raimi, Sony began work on Spider-Man 4, but it was scrapped in favor of a new reboot, The Amazing Spider-Man. However, only Raimi would be able to make it work if Sony wanted to adopt a particularly horrifying Marvel plot and character. Although Spider-Man isn’t normally connected with the horror subgenre, if one specific comic book monster were to appear on the big screen, it could only be as a part of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 4 with Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker.

The Man Spider

The term “Man-Spider” describes a mutant Peter Parker who has turned into a terrifying combination of a man and a spider. In the comic books, Peter has taken on the Man-Spider persona on quite a few occasions, like when the villain “the Queen” turned Peter into an actual massive arachnid or when he and fellow X-Men member Angel were mutated into animalistic forms by Brainchild. The character makes possibly its most well-known appearance in the 1990s animated series Spider-Man, in which Peter’s mutation becomes unstable.

Peter seeks assistance from Dr. Curt Connors, The Lizard, Charles Xavier, and Hank McCoy across an entire storyline, although he eventually develops four extra limbs. His transition into Man-Spider is accelerated by a confrontation with Frank Castle and Michael Morbius and can only be stopped by the collective forces of Kraven the Hunter and the Punisher.

Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 4

Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 4 is the only film that could possibly do Man-Spider justice. Raimi has plenty of experience in the horror genre with the Bruce Campbell-starring Evil Dead trilogy. His Spider-Man trilogy also contains horrific scenes, such as the killing of a medical staff member during the emergence of Doctor Octopus in Spider-Man 2. With 2022’s Doctor Strange in The Multiverse of Madness, which transforms former Avenger Wanda Maximoff into a murderous supervillain, the director has also shown that he is capable of creating a complete superhero horror film. Raimi is the ideal director to bring Man-Spider to existence .

In Spider-Man: No Way Home, Peter1 and Peter3 stare in disbelief as Tobey’s Peter creates natural webbing from his wrists. It would be simple to assume that Peter was evolving into a Man-Spider as his mutation progressed. Raimi might even make minor changes to his Spider-Man 4’s main antagonist, the Vulture/Adrian Toomes. After failing to drain Peter’s youth in Spider-Man 4, the Vulture finally unintentionally takes the Man-Spider mutation from him; thus, this story point might be simply incorporated into Raimi’s original script.

The Raimi universe is the ideal setting for exploring Man-Spider on screen as it is a more aesthetically pleasing, character-focused superhero series. Sony might take a bet on a revamped Tobey Maguire-led series . Thanks to the multiverse, it would enable not just the glorious comeback of Maguire and Sam Raimi to the Spider-Man franchise but also a fresh slate of Spider-Man movies running independently of the MCU.