The Amazing Spider-Man Netflix Series
SEASON 1
So there’s been a lot of news lately concerning the disastrous “Sony Hack.” A while back on one of those threads, I was wondering about the future of their main Marvel property, Spider-Man. I even mentioned that one of my dream ideas was to have the character adapted into a long-running television series, which I think could do the character even more justice than any series of two-hour movies. But what television studio would be willing to pony up the bucks to create a quality TV series about Marvel’s flagship character?
Well, I first thought HBO. However, I didn't do my research and had to be told that HBO is owned by Warner Bros. So I suppose that idea is out the window. My next best guess would be Netflix, on which we'll see Daredevil sometime next year.
And for those of you saying they can’t make a series like this due to budget concerns? Take a look at how good The Flash looks. That’s made on a CW budget.
So with that said, here is my basic outline for SEASON ONE of a hypothetical Amazing Spider-Man television series. I should note that none of this was designed to be feasibly possible, due to legal issues concerning rights, actors' commitments, etc. This is purely for entertainment purposes.
Executive Producers
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Kevin Feige (The Avengers)
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Greg Daniels (The Office)
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Stephen Merchant (The Office)
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Stan Lee (Spider-Man)
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Joss Whedon (The Avengers)
Producers
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Sam Raimi (Spider-Man)
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Craig Kyle (Thor)
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Brian Michael Bendis (Ultimate Spider-Man)
Directors
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David Nutter (Game of Thrones)
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John Dahl (Dexter)
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Adam Bernstein (Breaking Bad)
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Rian Johnson (Breaking Bad)
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David Slade (Hannibal)
Plot
With great power comes great responsibility.
The bite of an irradiated spider imbues awkward high-schooler Peter Parker with extraordinary powers. Now Peter must navigate the confusing world of adolescence while facing daily peril as the masked crimefighter, Spider-Man.
Cast
Freddie Highmore as Peter Parker
“Spider-Man”
Half of you are going to accept this choice, and the other half of you are going to hate it. I see a lot of people casting actor Logan Lerman in this role, and I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it’s just me, but while I think Lerman has potential, he’s incredibly bland. Freddie Highmore of Bates Motel fame (or Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, if you want to go even further back) has this really disarming innocence about him. As someone who found Andrew Garfield’s Parker bratty and obnoxious, I think Highmore would be able to make Spider-Man likable again. As a teenage Peter Parker, he could be very endearing and relatable.
Jamie Lee Curtis as May Parker
Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Jamie Lee Curtis in anything since Freaky Friday. I find her incredibly likable as an actress, and capable of giving off both warmth and humor in equal amounts. She’s old enough to possess some of May’s worldly wisdom, but still young enough not to seem like a tottering old lady. I think she would make a great “modern” Aunt May.
Dennis Quaid as Ben Parker
Here’s a character who would likely only appear in flashbacks, but I thought he deserved a quality actor to make the role resonate more on-screen. Dennis Quaid has this great, fatherly air about him that I think would make him wonderful in a mentor role. At one point I may have thought he’d be a good Jonathan Kent, but that might be a topic for another article. He’d make a very warm, down-to-earth Uncle Ben.
Emma Roberts as Gwen Stacy
I might be called unoriginal for this choice, but screw it, I think it works wonderfully. American Horror Story actress Emma Roberts was on Sony’s shortlist of actors to play Gwen in The Amazing Spider-Man before Emma Stone was cast. She’s already acted opposite Freddie Highmore, with whom she has pretty great on-screen chemistry with, in The Art of Getting By. She also seems to have a very humble, regular-girl kind of attitude that would make Gwen Stacy very endearing. This series would position Gwen as Peter’s best friend and closest confidant. Character-wise, she’s basically Ultimate Mary Jane.
Burkely Duffield as Flash Thompson
Eugene “Flash” Thompson is Peter Parker’s high school rival, a bully who relentlessly torments him and others. Ironically, he is one of Spider-Man’s biggest fans. Burkely Duffield is best known from Nickelodeon series House of Anubis -- he’s not got the greatest range or talent, but I wouldn’t think it takes all that much to play a foolish butt-head like Flash Thompson.
Claire Julien as Liz Allan
...Who? If you’ve never heard of her, I don’t blame you. The most high-profile role she’s had was in The Dark Knight Rises, where she played “Maid #3” ... yep. But as soon as I saw a picture of her, I thought she looked exactly like that type of girl who would date the star football player in high school, even if he was a complete clown. You all know what kind of girl I’m talking about, right? Anyway, that’s Liz Allan in a nutshell, and that’s how I landed on this decision. Fun fact: she’s the daughter of award-winning cinematographer Wally Pfister.
Tom Selleck as J. Jonah Jameson
I wanted an actor for Jonah that we hadn’t ever seen suggested before ... so here you go. Tom Selleck is getting up there in his years, but has just the kind of gruff demeanor that J.J.J. needs. I think he’d also be able to deliver on some of the character’s humor, without hamming it up in ways that only J.K. Simmons can get away with. Funny enough, it was Selleck’s signature mustache that made me think of him for this part. Seriously.
Dennis Haysbert as Joe “Robbie” Robertson
I’ve seen this idea suggested before, but it’s just so damn perfect. “Robbie” Robertson is an editor at the Daily Planet and close confidant to publisher J. Jonah Jameson. He takes a liking to teenage photographer Peter Parker, becoming his friend and mentor. Dennis Haysbert is known mainly for two things: helping sell Allstate insurance, and for playing the President of the United States in 24. He’s remarkably charismatic, and incredibly likable.
Willa Holland as Betty Brant
When choosing an actor for Betty, I had to decide between two options. Was she going to be an old-fashioned secretary, or a younger intern? I decided to go with the latter, due to it seeming like the more “modern” choice. Willa Holland is best recognized for her work on the CW’s Arrow, where she plays Thea Queen. She has the perfect look for this admittedly small role, and I could buy her easily as the type of girl a young Peter Parker would develop a crush on.
John Thaddeus as “The Burglar”
I don’t know much about this guy, other than that he has a shady kind of look about him. You don’t need much more than that for the Burglar who killed Uncle Ben. He’d only appear in flashbacks, but I think it’s important to give him a face. After all, Peter Parker’s very first enemy was tragically one of his greatest failures.
Vincent Kartheiser as “The Chameleon”
An interesting thing I thought a series like this could do would be to take us chronologically through the many super-villains Spider-Man faced over the years. The first of these, appearing in The Amazing Spider-Man #1, was The Chameleon. Originally created as a Soviet, I imagined the Chameleon as a faceless, nameless conman with no known superpowers but an uncanny method acting ability. Vincent Kartheiser caught my attention on AMC’s Mad Men, where he plays sleazy advertising executive Pete Campbell. The lizard-like sliminess he brings to that performance made me believe he’d fit this role like a glove.
Colm Feore as Adrian Toomes
“The Vulture”
I know, I know, he already had a role in the oft-maligned Amazing Spider-Man 2, but he was too good for this role for me to choose someone else. Colm Feore is well acquainted with villain roles, and would do well as seasoned career criminal Adrian Toomes, who adapts a flight suit into a tool to use in a jewel heist.
August Diehl as Otto Octavius
“Doctor Octopus”
This is one role that I agonized about for a while. No matter who I chose, nobody seemed to be able to live up to Alfred Molina -- in my eyes, that guy was born to play Doc Ock. Having said that, I think I landed on a pretty good choice. August Diehl is a German actor best known for his performance as S.S. Major Hellstrom in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds:
The guy is remarkably underrated, and I could see him bringing the same kind of intensity to a sociopathic mad-scientist like Doc Ock.
John Cena as Flint Marko
“Sandman”
Before I go on, just imagine a weedy-looking kid like Freddie Highmore fighting pro wrestler John Cena. No, not just fighting him, mocking him as he fights him. One of the things that makes people love Spider-Man is the fact that he’s an underdog -- he’s constantly pitted against psychopaths who could crush him like a fly. And despite knowing this, he still cracks jokes about it. It's one of his most endearing qualities.
Something that turned me off of Spidey’s portrayal in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is that he isn’t joking at the expense of a super-powered killer ... he’s pantsing a pudgy Russian guy with no powers to speak of. Instead of being the underdog, they turned Spider-Man into the bully. And to me, that isn’t Peter Parker.
Anyway, back on topic -- Flint Marko is not the type of character who needs to be portrayed in a sympathetic light. He is a hardcore thug, a hardened criminal with who happened to win the super power lottery. That’s exactly the type of character John Cena could play: uncomplicated, unsympathetic, whose physicality speaks more than anything else. Pitting a teenage Spider-Man against a monstrous dude like Cena would definitely make Spidey out to be the underdog.
Matthew Fox as Dr. Curt Connors
“The Lizard”
Dr. Curt Connors, in this series, would be Peter Parker’s biology teacher. Vastly overqualified for his job, Connors is a good man at heart who becomes almost a father-figure to Peter after his Uncle Ben’s death. Connors’ main character flaw is his ego, which leads him to dive headfirst into the field of genetic splicing that transforms him into the mindless “Lizard.” Rather than the cartoony Ditko-era Lizard, this version would be more in line with the bestial, blood-lusted Todd McFarlane Lizard. Matthew Fox seems like a complicated guy (if you've heard of his personal woes), and I think would be able to portray both the kindness and crippling flaws of this character.
Eugene Byrd as Max Dillon
“Electro”
Like Flint Marko, Max Dillion is not a character with a lot of depth. He never has been. He’s a two-bit scumbag who got lucky, and decided to use his powers to rob banks when he could have used it to change the world. He’s a thug, and not much more. The only thing I’ve seen Eugene Byrd in was 8 Mile, in which he played a sleazy, asshole music producer ... I think. As someone who was disappointed with Jamie Foxx’s phoned-in nerd caricature in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, I would be all for a more serious portrayal of this character, similar to the way he is in the “Ultimate” comics.
Adam Godley as Quentin Beck
“Mysterio”
Adam Godley is an award-winning actor who I know from his role as Elliot Schwartz in Breaking Bad. He has a sort of insecure, nerdy intelligence about him which I thought would befit Quentin Beck, the master of illusions better known as Mysterio. Mysterio has such a huge amount of potential, given the inherent “psychological” nature of his abilities. Rather than a villain who can punch Spidey to a pulp, Mysterio can actually drive him insane. That’s scary. Also -- look at Godley's face. Is that really the kind of face you expect a supervillain to have? Not really. That fact alone could put an interesting, possibly humorous twist on Mysterio's inevitable unmasking.
[Redacted] as “The Green Goblin”
What’s this? How can nobody play the Green Goblin? Everyone knows Goblin’s true identity is Norman Osborn, but in his original comic book appearance his secret identity was kept a mystery. I think that would be a fascinating way to introduce this character, before even introducing plot elements such as Oscorp. It would leave people wondering if Osborn really was the Green Goblin, or if the series was going a different direction. Introducing this little mystery would lead room for some interesting plot development in the future.
Dominic West as Sergei Kravinoff
“Kraven the Hunter”
My goal by the end of this fan-cast was to have introduced all of the original members of the Sinister Six. Kraven the Hunter is the sixth, a legendary big-game hunter whose greatest challenge is to kill “the Spider.” In this version of the story, Kraven would be drawn to New York by both Spidey’s presence, and the Lizard’s. Dominic West (of 300 and Punisher: War Zone) has the proper rugged look befitting of Kraven. I think he’d give the character some presence.
So that’s my idea -- or at least, my idea for the first season. You’ll notice I left out characters like Mary Jane and the Osborns, and that was intentional. You can only fit so much into ten episodes.
Like it? Hate it? Comment below and let me know. Cheers.