A realistic film in the vein of “Aliens” and “Terminator”, Leonardo DiCaprio as Peter Parker… Here is everything we know about James Cameron’s “Spider-Man”, which never found a buyer.
4 – When was this supposed to come out?
We are in the first half of the 1990s. James Cameron has just released Terminator 2: Judgment Day and is not yet making progress on his gigantic Titanic. He therefore began writing a Spider-Man film. No release date is planned because he doesn’t even have a distributor to release the film to the public when it’s made, but he’s embarking on the project anyway.
4 seconds of Titanic are blurry!
3 – What was the scenario?
The scenario never really saw the light of day, but the “treatment” signed by James Cameron (often a detailed synopsis accompanied by visual indications), was to pit Peter Parker against the famous Electro and Sandman.
In 2021, Cameron told Screencrush : “I think it would have been very different [des Spider-Man films sortis depuis]. I haven’t written a line that isn’t [validée par Stan Lee]. The first thing to understand is that it wasn’t Spider-Man, it was Spider-Kid. A Spider-Kid who is in high school, a geek that no one notices and socially unpopular.”
Sony Pictures
The origin of his powers must have come from a biological power following the bite of a radioactive spider, an element which was then added to Raimi’s films as well as to the comics. Cameron adds that Peter Parker’s powers were meant to be a metaphor for his puberty:
A [ado] gets bitten by a spider. (…) He makes a lousy suit that he absolutely has to improve, and the big problem is this damn suit. (…) I wanted to anchor [le film] in a reality, an experience that is universal.
In this detailed treatment, what was procured IGN, Sandman contacts Spidey to join his gang and make money together. Peter refuses, and the supervillain begins a smear campaign against the young man, who finds himself accused of all the crimes committed by the gang. This is also what Electro, presented here as an unscrupulous businessman, seeks to do.
Sony Pictures
In the expected, we find a Mary Jane in love with Spider-Man who got her out of a bad situation without knowing that it is her friend Peter, and the death of Uncle Ben at the hands of of a crook. In the film, Aunt May is sick and Peter needs money to pay his hospital bills, hence Peter’s pull to eventually join the gangs.
“I wanted to do something that was really uncompromisingly realistic. (…) I wanted something that was more in the vein of Aliens and Terminator, that you find immediately believable.”
2 – With what casting?
Even before turning Titanic, James Cameron wanted Leonardo DiCaprio to play the role of young Peter Parker, but the name of Edward Furlong had also been considered. Arnold Schwarzenegger has reportedly been contacted to play one of the supervillains. Nikki Cox, then heroine of the series Unhappily Ever After would have played Mary Jane Watson.
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But the movie didn’t go as far as these actors getting real offers.
1 – Why didn’t it happen?
The Cannon company, famous for its quickly produced and quickly released films, had held the rights to the character since the 1980s, but had just lost them when it went bankrupt in 1994.
Logically, Cameron therefore went with his script under his arm to approach the firm Carolco Pictures, which had just distributed Terminator 2. But the studio, which had just gone bankrupt following the catastrophic release of Pirate Island by Renny Harlin in 1995, is unable to follow up.
Twentieth Century Fox
James Cameron
“All of a sudden the film was free. I tried to convince Fox to buy it [Cameron avait déjà travaillé avec eux sur Aliens], but the rights were a little unclear, Sony apparently owned part of it and Fox didn’t want to fight. (…) I said to them: ‘Are you kidding? It could be worth, I don’t know, a billion!’ And 10 billion later…”
Indeed, the Spider-Man films have since brought in a fortune for the Sony studio, which since 2002 distributed the three films by Sam Raimi, the two by Marc Webb and the three by Jon Watts. In the same universe, Sony also released the Venom trilogy, Morbius and soon Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter.