MTv broke the following yesterday evening:

Well, now that the news has broken that both Raimi and Maguire have signed back on for a fourth and fifth installment – with a hefty paycheck attached as well — MTV News posed the big question to Dunst while she was promoting her upcoming film, “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People” with Simon Pegg. Is she in or is she out?

“I’m in,” said the actress matter of factly. However, when pressed to make the announcement official, Dunst quickly changed her tone, and rather cryptically added, “I’m not saying anything, I know there’s rumors…”

Now, this robot is probably one of the more forgiving of the short comings of Spider-Man 3 than the rest of my fellow bots, but I was kind of hoping they would use Dunst’s lack of commitment to take a break from her really bad portrayal of Mary Jane. I haven’t liked her MJ from the beginning, and I was really hoping they would write her out of the script, or at least give her a very limited part in 4 and 5, send her off to Hollywood to go after her acting/modeling career and allow some sparks to fly between Peter and Bryce Dallas Howard’s much better portrayal of Gwen Stacy; develop that relationship a little more since they decided to do things a little ass-backwards with her character.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m glad they are moving forward with the franchise. I hope they start a brand new story arch and don’t take a whole hell of a lot from the previous one. The mistakes of the past movie are not irredeemable and there is still some good stuff to explore in these movies with the current cast, director, and direction. But as far as Dunst returning… really don’t care.