After the enormous box office success of ‘Spider-Man 3,’ you would expect Sony Pictures to be all over part 4. But while Sony paid Marvel to renew the rights, there’s an unpleasantly low amount of news on the picture. Marvel Vice Chairman Peter Cuneo says it’s all up to Sony. They’ll have nothing to do with the movie, since the series started before Marvel went on to produce its own movies.

Coneo said the “most likely scenario is 2010 or 2011 but we can’t speak for them and I think that we don’t know. They have given us their re-up payment for that film so you know they’re going to make it within a reasonable timeframe. Sony may be looking at some issues with the cast and so on, I think they have to make some decisions.“

You can tell he isn’t giving out all his facts. Is Sam Raimi really not going to direct ‘Spider-Man 4′? Is Tobey Maguire sick of playing Spidey? It can’t be the money. The last movie made $890 million worldwide, so Sony has enough to pay these guys a decent salary. But I’d say Jason Biggs makes for a good new nerdy Peter Parker. Just to freshen up the series a bit.

Paramount Pictures International will begin to roll out ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ worldwide today. The movie is having its premiere in France, Belgium and Switzerland today, with the rest of the world following during the weekend. Dr. Henry Jones is only skipping Japan, but Paramount did the same with ‘Iron Man’ last month. Although ‘Iron Man’ will be released in Japan at the end of September, while ‘Indiana Jones 4′ will be there next month.

Paramount will ship an impressive 12,000 prints of the movie into 60 markets, with Germany and the UK both getting more than 1,000 prints. In the US, about 4,000 theaters are showing Spielberg’s blockbuster during the Memorial Day weekend. And as you would expect, there’s not much else releasing this weekend. No studio dared to put anything up to the most anticipated movie of the last years. Or should I say no studio was stupid enough? But will Indy beat ‘Spider-man 3′?

That’s the big question. Will ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ do an ‘Iron Man’ or ‘Prince Caspian’ weekend. The last one, ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian,’ had much lower opening than what initial tracking indicated. ‘Iron Man’ however, surprised the industry by breaking $100 million in the US during the first couple of days.

Tracking numbers for ‘Indiana Jones 4′ are good, but will it be able to top the opening of ‘Spider-man 3′ last year? The comic book hero made over $151 million in its first weekend, beating the $136 million opening by ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest’ in 2006.

The first two ‘Indiana Jones’ movies didn’t even cross the $200 million bar domestically during their total running time. But the first ‘Indiana Jones’ only cost $28 million and the second $48 million. The new ‘Indiana Jones’ movie is rumored to cost anywhere between $125 and $200 million to produce. Including marketing and distribution, the movie has to make $400 million before Harrison, Spielberg and Lucas will get paid.