I recently spoke with storyboard artist Jeff Henderson, who worked on "Spider-Man 4" before it was scrapped. During our conversation, he revealed that yes, Vulture would have been part of the film, as has been revealed in the past. But he admits there was never a definitive version of the story, as things were constantly evolving in the development stage. One version, though, would have seen Vulture's daughter as a "central character" who would have taken over The Daily Bugle, leaving J. Jonah Jameson out in the cold:
"The Daily Bugle was going to get bought out by a huge multinational conglomerate, kind of like a Daily News or a TMZ. They wanted to turn the Daily Bugle into a gossip rag. And for all of JJJ's faults, he was still a newsman. He's still old school like Walter Cronkite, 'News is news, this is bulls***,' that kind of thing. I thought thematically that was a really good way in, because you have that conflict between the modern and social media sensibility about news versus the old school version. So JJJ kind of got cast aside. The reveal was that the female executive who's in charge of the buyout, who's overseeing the company that's taken over The Bugle, ends up being [Vulture's] daughter."
