“James Vanderbilt is writing the script and I’m excited to read it. I think it’s going to be done in a few months. I’m hoping it’s as great as our discussions were about it and I’m hoping it feels right for me because I love Spider-Man. I’m hoping I’m well rested enough to embrace it and I’m hoping Sony wants me to do it. If all of those things come together, I would love to do it. There are a lot of unknowns about the future.”

Thanks Robin!

J.K. Simmons has also been speaking about is role in Spidey sequels on the set of “I Love You Man”,

SHH!: So we know that James Vanderbilt is close to turning in a script for “Spider-Man 4.” Have they reached out to you yet?
J.K. Simmons: We sort of check in once in a while. They say, you know, we want J.K. to do it. We don’t know where. We don’t know when. We don’t know who. We don’t know anything, you 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 mean its 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 I spoke to Tobey in I guess it was February, sort of awards season time and he’s certainly amenable to doing some more and hopefully we’ll be able to get everybody back and make another good one.

SHH!: Or a couple of ‘em?
Simmons: Couple, three, four, five! Whatever. You know, I could buy a bigger house.

SHH!: What if Sam decides not to come back as a director but stays as a producer, would you guys still be…
Simmons: Well…

SHH!: Would you and the rest of the gang still come back?
Simmons: Well, I can only speak for myself, but if Sam were not the director but still had a hand in it then I would certainly have a reasonable amount of faith in it. Obviously if he’s the director I’m there 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 wanna do. Plus they pay money.

Thanks GreenieGobbie

We’ll see how this and Spider-man 5 develop in the coming months.

Thanks GreenieGobbie

“I went in on that. I really loved the films,” Vanderbilt said. “It’s sort of an odd process because you’re sitting down with the people who made the first three and going, ‘Well let me tell you what to do.’

But I was lucky enough that they were interested in me and I’m a huge fan of those movies, so we closed that up right before the strike. Once the strike’s over I get to go to work.”

Do you have any inclination yet towards whether you’d like to produce or direct the next Spider-Man movie, or is too early to call?

Sam: I think that’s going to be up to Sony Pictures, and I think that it’s too early for them to say, actually. But currently I’m working on… well, not now, but as soon as the writers strike’s over… I’m going to begin working with a writer on the screenplay.

Is it important to you that the story follows on from the first three? I mean, how important is internal continuity to you? Can you go Evil Dead-style and change details a little bit, maybe change the story up a little bit?

Sam: If I was writing it I would have a very strong opinion about that, but we’re hiring a writer to come up with his own take. Sony was willing to go either way, we’ll just have to wait and see what the writer comes up with. I think anything’s possible, though.

I mean, there’s been so many different versions, it doesn’t have to follow the movies that we’ve made. I’d very much like to see Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man, so I have a personal interest in that, but certainly anything’s possible. Spider-Man’s such a big character in the comic books that he could endure a lot of different interpretations. You could start over or you could start with a different aspect of the story than I’ve focused on in the pictures I’ve made, we’ll just have to wait and see what the writer comes up with.

Do you think the story will still be interesting if Spider-Man moves on and gets married? Because within the world of comics, a lot of writers complain that once he got married the stories weren’t as interesting, and the movies seem to be heading towards that. As someone who’s a married man and has a family, what do you think of this idea that he can’t be interesting once he’s married?

Sam: He’s most powerful to me as an adolescent. The thing that Stan Lee created that was so special was that he was a very young character, and he’s a kid trying to deal with these fantastic powers. The idea of being married counters that a little bit. It’s a place of accepted responsibility versus being on the road to learning responsibility. It’s associated with adulthood versus being the ultimate kid who’s a superhero. So it’s not that you couldn’t tell a good story with a married Spider-Man, but my favorite Spider-Man is the unmarried one.

Looking back, you’ve worked on Spider-Man in some way for nearly eight years. Has the excitement stayed with you?

RAIMI: I’m just as excited about the character, and so in that sense, yes. Although the physical energy level between how I felt before I started shooting versus what was left of me on the last day of photography, I was so exhausted at the end of “Spider-Man 3″ I can’t tell you. My love for the characters and my passion for the stories are the same, but I was just a shell of the person that I was after all of those movies.

If you had to take a break and pick a director to replace you on the franchise, is there anyone at the top of your list?

RAIMI: Because I love Spider-Man I would just say—I don’t want to pick someone. I don’t know if I’ll be directing the picture or not, but I’d like to say that it would be somebody that was the best gift I could give to Spider-Man—someone who understands him and loves him and could bring his passion and love to the character. A character director probably; no one else.

Fox’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” which is being penned by James Vanderbilt (”Zodiac”), [... is] among dozens of scripts that are being flipped, a process that actually is uniting execs and scribes in one goal: to get a script that is filmable. - Hollywood Reporter

Whilst looking towards the future, it is reported that Vanderbilt has been chosen by Sony executives to pen the fourth Spider-man feature:

Several writers were being considered for the fourth installment, and Vanderbilt apparently was chosen by Sony executives for his character-driven approach to the story rather than a focus on special effects. - Coming Soon

Question: And the other thing of course is you haven’t really left Marvel behind completely right? I mean you’re still personally involved in Hulk and Iron Man …

Arad: ..and Spiderman. And I’m making Venom.

Question: So what’s different about you doing those movies now as against when you were directly in charge of Marvel? 

Who knows which villains will star in the fourth feature film, but there are a few hints out there as to which characters will be favoured. First up, in January this year, Dylan Baker, who portrays Dr. Curt Connor, said this in an interview with IGN:

IGN: Have they talked to you about becoming The Lizard in a future sequel?

Baker: Only Sam [Raimi]. Only Sam. And, of course, the whole thing is in his head. So as long as his brilliant ideas keep coming, I’ll go with him.

IGN: When Sam hired you for Spider-Man 2, did he talk to you about the character in the comics and what happens to him?

Baker: Yeah, but only in broad strokes. We’re getting a little more specific now, but it’s still pretty broad.

IGN: So you’d be up for a lot of hours in the makeup chair to add the green skin and scales?

Baker: Absolutely!

And in a more recent MTV article concerning the next movie, Raimi talked about some of the villains he would like to see:

“I would love to see Electro, Vulture, maybe the Sinister Six as a team”

Slash Film have a great feature discussing the odds and likelihood of seeing each of Spider-man’s foes. They gave The Lizard a 95% chance, Electro 73%, Hydro-man 68%, etc. with lonely Rhino at the bottom with a measly 9%.