We’ve known for a while that Sam Raimi was due to produce a film reboot of The Shadow, but new rumours suggest that following his departure from Spider-man 4, he’s now keen to take the director’s chair on the new version of the hero with the power to cloud men’s minds. While this could just be the latest in the seemingly daily list of films someone says Raimi is considering directing, this one seems less of a stretch than some, especially considering he was already attached to produce.
The news comes vis IESB, who have a review of the latest version of The Shadow script (apparently pretty good but rather generic), but add at the end, “The Shadow is currently set up at Sony with Sam Raimi (having recently walked from the Spider-Man films) lined up to produce. However, we are hearing from our sources that Raimi is itching to get back in the director’s chair ASAP and wants The Shadow to be his next directorial feature. He loves the character and flipped over this latest draft.”
Did you notice the potential spanner in the works there? Yes, it’s set up at Sony, the studio Raimi had such problems working with on Spider-man. They couldn’t agree on the villains, with the ructions eventually leading him to give up on directing Spidey 4 completely. Would Raimi really want to go back to Sony so quickly? Perhaps he’d get more control over a new franchise, as the studio has less riding on it than they do Spider-man. We’ll have to wait and see.
After Darkman and Spider-man, The Shadow would make sense for a Raimi directorial project, but at the moment I think we should file this in the rumour drawer. That said, IESB did get the Spider-man 4 troubles news early, so it may turn out to be true.