Before the Amazing Spider-Man project was thought of, Sony were originally going to produce another film in the original series, Spider-Man 4. This would be directed by Sam Raimi and star Tobey Maguire like the other films. However, the company and Raimi could not agree on the way the story should be told. it seems the main problem was that Sony wanted to release the film in summer 2011 and Raimi felt he couldn't do a good enough job in that time - the most detailed story I can find on the subject is here.

Raimi then left, and Tobey Maguire went with him. Later Sony decided to go back to the Spider-Man story, but in a different way. The Amazing Spider-Man is different from the original trilogy - it goes back to Peter Parker's schooldays (which makes me wonder how it will be different from the first Spider-Man? Anyway, we'll see). The director is Marc Webb and the film stars Andrew Garfield. Two further movies have been commissioned.