“Spider-Man” leading man Tobey Maguire is keen on turning the 1980s Japanese cartoon series “Robotech” into a movie for Warner Bros. Maguire is helping produce the movie for the studio via his company and is also considering taking a part in the expensive sci-fi project. If he does decide to star in “Robotech” it may mean that he is no longer considering donning the Spider-Man costume in any more sequels for Sony Pictures.

“Robotech” was a popular cartoon series 20 years ago when it was broadcast in syndication for American children. Adapted from a series of Japanese shows it is about the nations of the world setting aside their differences in order to investigate a large extraterrestrial vessel that has crash-landed on Earth. As countries develop technology from the alien ship they are able to manufacturer giant robot suits of armor called mecha. When hostile aliens show up demanding that we give them the crashed UFO soldiers don the mecha and take the fight into space against the attacking invaders.

We are very excited to bring ‘Robotech’ to the big screen,” Maguire said to the press about the movie. “There is a rich mythology that will be a great foundation for a sophisticated, smart and entertaining film.” He is producing the film with Drew Crevello and Jason Netter.

The newest “Spider-Man” film is king of the Hollywood hill. After its opening weekend “Spider-Man 3” has earned $148 million dollars from its release in North America and an additional $227 million from ticket sales internationally. The movie’s weekend opening broke the record for the biggest opening weekend debut ever beating last year’s champ, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest”, by $13 million dollars. On the movie’s opening day last Friday the new Spider-Man adventure took in $59.3 million dollars and also claimed the record for the biggest single-day ticket sales.

Chances are the new “Spider-Man” will continue to be the titan of the box office for the next two weeks until “Shrek the Third” and the third “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies open later this month. “Spider-Man 3” reportedly cost more than $250 million dollars and is playing on over 4,200 screens, the widest-ever release for the most expensive movie ever. It may have been a huge gamble for Sony Pictures to roll the dice when they began filming the movie but not anymore now that the dollars are being counted. And talk about the inevitable “Spider-Man 4” has already begun with supervillains Carnage and The Lizard topping the list for Spider-Man’s new movie enemies. But will stars Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst return for a new “Spider-Man” movie now that their three-picture contract obligation is fulfilled? Both have said that the only way to get them back playing Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson is to make sure that director Sam Raimi also returns to work on a fourth picture.

While in Australia to promote the opening of “The Good German”, star Tobey Maguire surprised the media by stating that he’s done with wearing the blue and red costume of Spider-Man after the third movie opens. “It feels like a trilogy to me and it feels like the end,” Maguire told “The Courier-Mail” newspaper when questioned about whether he would consider making a “Spider-Man 4″. Added Maguire, “To me it seems like this is a natural point for the team to break up because we have a lot of story conclusions that were going along for the main characters for the first two movies and we kind of tie almost everything up for the third movie.”

Maguire and fellow star Kirsten Dunst were only signed to star in three “Spider-Man” movies when they were cast in the parts of Peter Parker and Mary-Jane Watson. There was a brief time when Jake Gyllenhaal was considered to replace Maguire in “Spider-Man 2″, but a last minute reconciliation between the actor and “Spider-Man” movie studio Sony Pictures avoided that potential disaster. The movie franchise has made over a billion dollars at the box office for Sony and producer Laura Ziskin has said before that she would like to make a total of six movies featuring the Marvel Comics superhero before calling it a day. As well, no one knows if director Sam Raimi is interested in making another movie or move on to other endeavors.