Leva’s face should be known to fans of Spider-Man in the mid-1980s, as Leva (who was working as a Hollywood stunt man at the time) appeared as Spider-Man on the cover of Amazing Spider-Man #262 in 1985…
I occasionally see references to Leva’s appearance on the cover of the issue as being a sort of tie-in with the proposed Cannon film adaptation, but I find that too hard to believe to be taken too seriously. The comic book in question was released in either December 1984 or January 1985. That was well before the Cannon Film adaptation got close to actually casting a Spider-Man. Instead, I think it is more likely that Leva’s appearance on the cover of Spider-Man made it so that he WAS on the radar when the Cannon film began the early stages of development starting later in 1985.
At one stage there was even a Trailer to the Spider-Man movie!
One of the problems was that they couldn’t find a good enough script. Originally Tobe Hooper was going to direct but that fell apart, at least in part because the original script was just too far away from the comic books (Hooper’s version of the film would have been much more horror-inspired).
Leva even did some promo shots for the film
Finally, Cannon canceled the film, leading to a long period where Spider-Man was in development hell, caught between various studios (this was during the time that James Cameron almost directed a Spider-Man film).