CHAPTER 1:
BEFORE RAIMI
Spider-Man is one of Marvel's most iconic heroes. Created by Stan Lee & Steve Ditkos in 1962, Spidey is said to be one of the few superheroes that teenagers can relate to. Due to his popularity, it wasn't surprising that studios would want to take a crack at the webslinger.
Before any movies were put in development, a cartoon series aired. This introduced general audiences to Spider-Man (and that stupid catchy as hell theme song). The show is still popular in the wonderful world of internet memes.
In the 70s, one of the cartoon's producers, Steve Krantz, tried to produce a live-action Spider-Man movie. He said it would be an action-comedy-musical...
KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!!!!!
Sorry. This film would feature Spidey go up against 100-foot-robots and nazis. Because why not. The project, however, never came to be.
1977 brought us a TV movie which many consider to be the first Spider-Man film, even though it's simply a feature-length pilot for a television series. See, Marvel had struck a deal with CBS to make television films of their properties (Doctor Strange and Captain America being the other two). In this, Peter parker was played by Nicholas Hammond, who you may know as Fredrich from The Sound Of Music.
No wonder they made a Spidey musical.
Marvel and Stan Lee, who was a consultant on the pilot, both hated it. They claimed it was too juvenile and childish. However, CBS didn't care as they commissioned a full series. It ran for two seasons before it's cancellation in 1979.
In the early 80s, Marvel made a deal with Orion Pictures for the Spidey film rights. Orion gave the project to Roger Corman.
I'm gonna repeat that.
They gave the project to the guy who made this.
Corman's film would have been written by Stan Lee himself. Lee's script had Peter as a college student. He would fight Doc Ock. And Mary Jane would be in it. And she would be a Russian agent. And Spider-Man would help her stop a nuclear war. Because why not.
However, Lee's script was considered to ambitious for Roger Corman, who was known for low budget pictures. So Orion Pictures let the rights go.
After that, Marvel's film agent around the 80s, Don Koplaff, was trying to sell the rights to a different studio. After most of them said no, Cannon Films tried to purchase the rights for $225,000. To which Koplaff replied...
So Cannon got the rights. The cofounders of Cannon Films, Menaham Golan and Yoram Globus, were incredibly excited for the project. There was just one tiny problem - They knew nothing about Spider-Man. They knew so little that they thought Spider-Man wasn't a superhero. They thought they were making a creature feature. In fact, Missing In Action director, Joesph Zito, was supposed to direct but dropped out because Golan and Globus knew nothing about Spidey.
The origin in this film's first draft was that Peter was a down-on-his-luck employee for a mutant-creating mad scientist called Dr. Zork. Zork accidentally turned Peter into Spider-Man and now he has to fight an army of mutants. The second draft had Peter turn into an eight-legged mutant.
When Albert Pyun became the director, the Zork plot was dropped. That character was replaced with Doc Ock. Then THAT was dropped in order to have Spider-Man fight a vampire. Because why not. Pyun fought hard for The Lizard to be the villain. However, that would cost too much and the studio was trying to keep the project low-budget. As you can imagine, Stan Lee hated all these scripts. However, he kept asking the studio if he could play J. Jonah Jameson.
While Pyun was directing this film, he was also trying to direct another Cannon feature, a sequel to Masters of the Universe. He tried to film both at the same time, but both projects were cancelled. Pyun used some of the sets for his movie, Cyborg. Spider-Man was cancelled due to lack of funding around the time when all the actors were cast and most of the sets were ready. They even had stuntman Scott Leva set to play Spidey and even tested him in the costume.
Thankfully, there would never be a bad Spidey film.
A few years after the project was cancelled, Golan sold the rights to Carolco Pictures under the condition that he is listed as producer for the film. James Cameron, who was at Carolco producing a Kathryn Bigelow-directed X-Men film, left that project to direct Spider-Man. However, there was a problem. When the studio gave him the contract, they accidentally gave him one saying that he had control over who gets what credits, which means Cameron said no to Golan's producing credit. Golan reacted like this:
Cameron wrote two drafts for the film. His first draft had two villains, Electro and Sandman. His second draft had one villain, Doc Ock. Both drafts were darker and, according to the LA Times, "sadisctically violent". Sandman's defeat would be him melting into glass. The Electro and Sandman draft are infamous because they changed their names. In fact there were a lot of changes from the comics. Peter became Spidey before Uncle Ben's death. Jameson was now the owner of a TV station, and the Bugle doesn't even exist.
According to many people, Cameron's version was leaning toward an "R" rating with the violence and an infamous scene where (and I'm not making this up) Spider-Man and Mary Jand have sex on top of a bridge. Because why not. Speaking of this kind of stuff. There was one scene that compared Spider-Man's webbing to...
HEY! DON'T LEAVE! I SWEAR I'M NOT MAKING ANY OF THIS UP!
Sorry about that. Cameron had two people in mind for Spidey. First was Leonardo DiCaprio, who would later work with Cameron on Titanic, and the other was Edward Furlong, who had already worked with Cameron on Terminator 2. Doc Ock was going to be played by ARNOLD! This casting could have worked as Doc Ock is known for being an over-the-top mad scientist. Heck, Arnold would have made a good Mr. Freeze if they went with the old Freeze instead of the 90s cartoon version.
When this movie was in development, Marvel realized something. That something was "Oh, crap! We gave the rights to three different studios!" The lawsuits with these studios were huge. Espicially with Golan and Cannon Films, who were upset because Carolco didn't stick to their promise about the producing credit.
However, the mess sorted itself out and Marvel eventually took the rights elsewhere. This time, to Sony.
TO BE CONTINUED...