Spider-Man 4…and 5? JK Simmons Is Up For It…Sort Of. Mostly.

So…did you get to read the Spider-Man 4 script yet? 

Apparently I Love You, Man, the comedy written and directed by John Hamburg, had a sort of open house day on their set, which means there are lots of quotes from actors involved, including Jason Segel, Paul Rudd, and our man of the moment J.K. Simmons.

Simmons is a great character actor, and one of the few working today who really smoothly glides between TV and feature films. In I Love You, Man, he plays a dad (he says he’s been getting lots of dad part offers after Juno), but of course he’s also known for his great comic turn as eternally exploding newspaper editor J. Jonah Jameson in the Spider-Man movies. That means he got asked Spider-Man questions and surprisingly, didn’t just say, I don’t know anything, I’m here to talk about this movie, or some other PR smooth stuff. Here’s what he said, as reported by IESB:

IESB: So we know that James Vanderbilt just turned in a script for Spiderman 4 have they reached out to you yet or anything?

JK: We, sort of, check in once in a while, they say, y’know, we want JK to do it.  We don’t know where.  We don’t know when. We don’t know who.  We don’t know anything, y’know?  They signed all of us for the first three films.  Sam, Tobey, all the way down the line to me and, we’ll see where it goes.  I also, I mean, it’s all conjecture and you guys probably know more than I do at this point.  There was talk of doing four and five concurrently and I don’t know if they’re still considering that or not and, y’know, I spoke to Tobey in, I guess it was February…sort of awards season time and, y’know, he’s certainly amenable to doing some more and hopefully we’ll be able to get everybody back and make another good one.

IESB: Or a couple of them?

JK: Couple, three, four, five!  Whatever, you know, I could buy a bigger house.

IESB: What if Sam decides not to come back as a director but stays as a producer, would you guys still be-
JK: Well-

IESB: Would you and the rest of the gang still come back.

JK: Well, I can only speak for myself, but, if Sam were not the director but was, still had a hand in it then I would certainly have a reasonable amount of faith in it. You know? Obviously if he’s the director I’m there a 100%.   If he’s not involved at all, which I think is VERY unlikely, then it would be a situation that I would have to think about.  But if he’s involved, hopefully directing or at least as a producer then I’m pretty confident that it would be something that I want to do.  Plus they pay money.  

 Ah, so he’s in if the team returns, if they don’t, maybe not…It would be nice to get some resolution on all of this and stop dealing with rumors. Sam Raimi, can you comment some time?