From the beginning, Spider-Man 4 has been kind of a mess. It’s taken months to sort out whether it’s happening, when it’s happening, or even who will be involved in it. Then just when we thought the whole thing was ready to go with Sam Raimi directing and Tobey Maguire back in the blue in red, last week this bomb dropped on Spidey’s head. Word was the problems with the script could delay the film.

Today Tobey Maguire stepped up and addressed the movie’s delay in a web chat transcribed by the Associated Press. His take? It’s a process. Says Maguire, “We're just in the midst of the process. We have a lot of great stuff in terms of story and script. We're just trying to dial it in and get it ready as quickly as possible. Of course, these movies are a very big undertaking and take a lot more time than a drama or something more straightforward.”

Better that they take their time about it than get it wrong, but it’s hard not to notice that the process on this particular Spider-Man seems to be taking a more lengthy and convoluted path than it did on the previous ones. Maguire though, seems to be optimistic about it all working out. He says, “It's all happening right now. It's all sort of coming together. It's very exciting to me. I think the evolution of the character is really exciting, to be rooted in the history of what we've done already and to have a continuity, yet have a progression or evolution.”