With the release of Spider-Man 3 coming up in May, fans are already chomping at the bit for more cinematic adventures from their friendly neighborhood wallcrawler. The issue is whether or not director Sam Raimi and the cast want to come back for more.

“I’m sure they’ll keep making Spider-Man pictures,” Raimi is quoted as saying in the January/February issue of Premiere Magazine. The helmer inked contracts for each individual Spidey flick so he would have to be re-signed for a fourth installment. “Amy [Pascal, Sony co-chairman] told me that she would keep making Spidey movies. I love Spider-Man. And I love working with Kirsten [Dunst], Tobey [Maguire], and James [Franco],” the director said. “I don’t know if Thomas [Haden Church] and Topher [Grace] will be around in the next one, but probably Bryce [Dallas Howard] will be.”

Bryce Dallas Howard might be back for Spidey 4? Pretty interesting slip there, Sam. It seems the big-screen Gwen Stacy doesn’t share her comic book counterpart’s fate.

Raimi continued, “But I have to make sure that when I’m done with this picture I’m really still fascinated with the character. At this moment I’m fascinated with him. Whether or not I will be in six months when the movie’s done I couldn’t say. And I absolutely would not have anything to do with the picture unless I was hungry to tell the story.”

Maguire recently reminded fans that he’s not obligated to do any more Spider-Man films after the three he was contracted for. Would Raimi be up for doing a sequel with a different actor in the title role? “I’d rather not,” Raimi said. “No, I couldn’t imagine it.” Spidey fans can only hope that everyone returns for more!

San Diego Comic-Con Interview with the stars of Spider-Man 3!

There was a roundtable interview at 2006 Comic-Con International in San Diego that Delaware County Magazine was at that featured Spider-Man 3 director Sam Raimi and cast members Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard and Thomas Haden Church.

The interviews took place prior to Sony’s presentation of exclusive new footage from the highly anticipated film. Here’s what Raimi and his stars had to say about Spider-Man 3 and their characters.

Question: We’ve always heard you were more interested in the classic villains. What made you bring Venom into this movie?

Sam Raimi: Well, Avi Arad - who really has the pulse of the Marvel fans, better than the head of any corporation has understood those people interested in the corporation’s product - really knows what those kids want. And he said, you’ve had two Spider-Man pictures and there’s so many kids, so many fans of Spider-Man, that want to see Venom. Even though you didn’t grow up with him, they want to see him. You’ve got the Sandman, he’s one of your favorite villains, so why don’t you bring Venom in also and make those kids, the fans of Venom, happy. So I thought that’s what we should do.

Question: But do you like him now?

Raimi: Now that I’ve seen Topher Grace perform him, and saw what Alvin Sargent did with the script - he created a great character, really filled out Eddie Brock into a very meaningful character. And Tobey has a great energy with him in the few scenes they play together as competitors and I really like him now.

Question: So which version of Venom will yours be based on?

Raimi: We studied all the different looks. So many different artists created different looks for Venom and we tried to take the ones that worked best for us but also the ones Avi felt were the most classic elements and base it on that. There’s a lot of fantastic elements about Venom that you could say are in conflict with the realism that we wanted to have in the picture. But we just said to ourselves, ‘Kirsten and Tobey, you’ll just have to do the heavy-lifting here to bring it back down to earth because there’s this wild goof from outer space and you’ll just have to connect us to the characters.” [laughter] Question: So Venom is from outer space?

Raimi: I never said that, sir. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Question: How do you deal with juggling so many characters?

Raimi: Well, Spider-Man comic books had all these characters and successfully interwove their stories. A lot of what we’re doing is not introducing elements, like if Harry Osborn does decide to seek vengeance upon Peter Parker for the death of his father, it’s certainly something that’s been set up in the first and then second picture. This is more the conclusion of that. So we have less work to do in that sense of not just introducing all of these new people. One of the other villains we’ve tried to weave the story into Peter Parker’s personal life in as important of a way as we could, and in a way that will hopefully make more of the first two pictures and give us insights into what we’ve seen before. Probably only with the character of Brock is there a complete new introduction of elements into Peter’s life. But that’s okay because he can meet new people, too.

Question: So what’s new for your characters this time? How have they grown?

Kirsten Dunst: Well, for Mary Jane...Basically, she’s still an actress and you could see where it was heading towards in the last film with Peter. Emotionally it’s much more adult and mature. There’s a lot more at stake because of their relationship. They’re together. Emotionally, there’s a lot more at stake for all the characters, and I think that we’ve gone more into their relationship because they’re older and it’s become more complicated. Emotionally, it’s a much heavier film to me.

Question: And Tobey?

Tobey Maguire: Obviously, there’s a continuity of character that we have to keep up. Peter Parker is Peter Parker, so it’s important to not just try to create new things for Peter just for the sake of that, but I don’t necessarily want to see the same scenes played out and see Peter go through the same kinds of things that he’s gone through. So I think that Alvin and the other people who had input into Peter’s story and what Peter’s going through in this movie did a fantastic job because as an actor for me there was nothing stale about it. I got to approach it and got to do brand new, really fun, interesting things for myself. And in terms of what the specifics of that are, you’ll see them when you check out the movie.

Question: Tobey, you seem to delve into the darker aspects of Peter Parker, at least judging by the trailer. Was it more rewarding for you as an actor to sink your teeth into the dark side of who this guy is or who he could become?

Maguire: We’ve gone into some new and different areas, it was fun for me without losing touch with who Peter is and so I really enjoyed the things I got to do in the movie.

Question: Whether there’s another movie or not, does this movie bring the whole story to some closure?

Dunst: This is definitely a culmination but you’d have to have seen the first and second movies. This definitely ties up some storylines but if there are more stories to tell, if things are unresolved, then we will tell them. But I think it depends on if everyone’s game and there’s a story to tell. Because if there’s a good story, I’ll be there.

Question: What about the casting of Bryce Dallas Howard as Gwen Stacy?

Raimi: We just cast the best actress for the part. Tobey, our producer Laura Ziskin, myself, Grant Curtis. We just wanted to find the best actress for the role. Not someone who looked like Gwen Stacy of the comics, although once the actress would have been cast that would have been our immediate job. How do we make her look like the image that the kids have grown up with? But nevertheless in casting, we’re just trying to find the right person who can make it real, who can take the dialogue and bring it to life. Read it in the most unexpected way, bring some life to it. Make it interesting, exciting for me who is watching it, for Tobey who is acting it, for Laura who was watching it with us. That’s really what the casting is about. The moment came when Bryce read the scene, one particular scene, and it came to life for us suddenly, and we all looked to each other and felt energized. It was a different thing than with Kirsten and Tobey because we were after a different relationship there. But here we were looking for a great actress and that’s what seemed to jump out at us.

Question: Sam, can you talk about filming in L.A. and Cleveland? Was that just for economics?

Raimi: Cleveland was wonderful to us. They really put the red carpet out for us and allowed us to do a tremendous amount of shooting there so we’re very thankful to that city. What happened was that the soundstages were in Los Angeles...all the stage work was done there or 90% of it. And New York has always been the city of Spider-Man so we went to New York to shoot all the location photography. There is a car action sequence, but Manhattan couldn’t give us ten straight blocks of city dedicated to our car chase but Cleveland could. So we sent a second unit there, under the direction of Dan Bradley, a great stunt coordinator and second unit director I’ve worked with before, to shoot these car action stunts there. So for ten days we were able to monopolize these streets, so that’s why we shot in Cleveland.

Question: Can you talk about the special effects process?

Raimi: Well, what I think is different this time is there’s new challenges. We had to bring about the Sandman and we’ve got a great special effects designer in Scott Stokdyk who did the first two Spider-Man pictures along with John Dykstra. Now he’s got the job alone. We’ve got a lot of the same animators, we’ve replaced a lot of them. Others have moved on, but the core team is there and we’ve tried to build upon it. So we’ve become better at working with animation. I’ve learned a lot over the last five years...But as far as the technical aspects and what the new hurdles are, it's really about bringing about the Sandman to the screen. How can we make it believable to the audience? Not just fantastic, but believable, that this fella could turn into sand and become this substance and still be a human being without feeling the hand of manipulation of the artist. Venom is less of a technical challenge and more of an artistic challenge in trying to capture the spirit of this very powerful, somewhat spider-ized, graceful, but animalized and not a Spider-Man style of movement. That’s more of capturing a form of dance on screen.

Raimi, Maguire and Dunst exit the interview, making way for cast members Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard and Thomas Haden Church.

Question: Topher, what’s it like playing Venom?

Topher Grace: He’s a great character to play. Unlike most bad guys, he truly loves being evil. He really comes to grips with it and enjoys it so it was fun to play someone who finds their way to that place. It’s a fun thing to play as an actor.

Question: Did any of you have any trepidation about taking on a comic book movie and becoming part of such a phenomenon?

Thomas Haden Church: I wouldn’t say there was trepidation, but you have a tradition with the comic book that you have to honor and then you look at the requisite storytelling that went on with the first two movies, I just wanted to do my part. Get in the game, be in it for minute, and not fumble the ball in the endzone. I just wanted to be able to do what was asked of me. Sam is a real actor’s director. I’ve described him as Elia Kazan trapped inside this Motor City madman action picture director body...He just has a great specificity and I think that’s part of the allure of the movies to create people that are very accessible and to hire actors that are very accessible and identifiable to the audience.

Question: Were any of you fans of the comics?

Grace: Yeah, I got into it when Todd McFarlane was illustrating the comic in the late ‘80s, which fortunately was right when my character was coming into existence. I was such a big fan, really of Peter Parker and a lot of work McFarlane had done. So I’m probably the geekiest guy ever to be cast in a geek film. The first day I was on the set I was in the Bugle, and just as a fan of the first two movies, you know like those theme parks that are like, “We’ll put you in the movie.” And the guy’s there with the cigar. “Parker, get in here!” It was tough because I had to be angry, but I was just smiling ear to ear.

Question: Is there supposed to be a dichotomy between Eddie Brock and Peter Parker?

Grace: There is. That’s what I liked about the character the most. It’s kind of a case study if someone had the same job and kind of the same taste in women and got the same powers, but had a really bad upbringing. I used to say on-set to Sam, “With great power comes great fun.”

Question: Bryce, can you say anything about the love triangle involving your character, or if her fate is the same as what it was in the comic?

Bryce Dallas Howard: I can’t really say anything about any of that. What I can say is, and I’m sure you audiences know this, but the second film was twice as big as the first film. And the third film is three times as big as the entire franchise put together, and that’s a testament to how much integrity and passion that everyone who’s working on this truly has. They could just sit back and be like, “We got it. We’ve got the people who are in the seats opening weekend.” They don’t do that. They work so incredibly hard and they push themselves artistically. What Sam brings into this is how moral are we going to make this for the kids seeing this. And bringing it back to Gwen Stacy, he’s very reverent to everything people would expect and yet it’s surprising. I think the fans of these movies and the comic books will like this film as they have the previous two.

Question: Thomas, how does it feel to have to train for months when all she had to do was dye her hair? Did the training ever get to you?

Church: It was physically daunting to show up last year with the physique of a fishing line and, weirdly, they said this won’t work for us. You’ve got to be more built. But actually, Topher and I both trained -

Grace: - he saw slightly better results.

Church: Once again, you just try to tow the line and do what’s asked of you. It’s been a great discipline. I’ve probably worked out for about sixteen months and it’s just a good discipline to add to my life. It was very reinvigorating to reincorporate that.