Development
Beginning in 1975, Marvel Comics made plans to bring its characters to films. By the early 1980s, the company was in negotiations with producers to bring its flagship character Spider-Man to the big screen, a process which was influenced by the critical and commercial success of Superman (1978), which was based on rival DC Comics' flagship character Superman. The producer Roger Corman was the first to hold an option on the Spider-Man property, and began to develop the film at Orion Pictures. Stan Lee, the co-creator of Spider-Man, was brought in to write a screenplay which featured Cold War themes and Doctor Octopus as the primary antagonist. The project did not come to fruition following budgetary disputes between Corman and Lee, as well as the critical and commercial failure of Superman III (1983), which made film adaptations of comic books a hard sell in the industry.
The film rights were then acquired by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus of The Cannon Group for $225,000 in 1985. Golan and Globus were not familiar with Spider-Man and mistook him for a werewolf-like character. Leslie Stevens, creator of The Outer Limits, was hired to write a screenplay based on this concept. Stevens' script depicted Peter Parker as a photographer who is subjected to a mad scientist's experiment, which transforms him into a human tarantula. Tobe Hooper, who was preparing to shoot The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and Invaders from Mars (both 1986) for Cannon, signed on to direct. Lee despised the horror route the studio was taking with the character and demanded that a new script be written that was closer to the source material. By 1985, a new screenplay was being developed by Ted Newsom and John Brancato. In this version, Peter receives his spider-like abilities from a cyclotron experiment. Doctor Octopus served as the antagonist and was written as Peter's mentor-turned-enemy. Barney Cohen was brought in to do a rewrite, which added humor, additional action scenes, and a supporting villain. Newsom and Brancato had John Cusack in mind for the part of Peter Parker.
Cannon hired as director Joseph Zito, who had previously directed the commercially successful Invasion U.S.A. (1985) for the studio. Cannon considered Tom Cruise for the role of Peter Parker, while Zito was interested in casting the actor and stuntman Scott Leva, who had previously done promotional appearances as Spider-Man for Marvel. Bob Hoskins was considered for Doctor Octopus while Lauren Bacall and Katharine Hepburn were considered for Aunt May, while Gregory Peck and Paul Newman were considered for Uncle Ben. Lee expressed his desire to make a cameo appearance as J. Jonah Jameson in the film. The project was tentatively titled Spider-Man: The Movie and was budgeted between $15–20 million. Following the critical and financial failures of two 1987 Cannon films—Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and Masters of the Universe—the budget for Spider-Man: The Movie was cut to $7 million. Zito was unhappy with the lower budget and stepped down as the director. He was replaced by Albert Pyun, but the project was cancelled following Cannon's acquisition by Giancarlo Paretti and Golan's departure from the studio.
Golan extended his option on Spider-Man during his tenure as CEO of 21st Century Film Corporation. By 1989, he was attempting to revive the project using the script, budget, and storyboards developed at Cannon. In order to receive production funds, Golan sold the television rights to Viacom, the home video rights to Columbia Pictures, and the theatrical rights to Carolco Pictures, where James Cameron signed on to write and direct the film. Cameron had previously met with Stan Lee to discuss a possible X-Men film, but Lee convinced Cameron that he would be a good choice to direct a Spider-Man film.
Cameron submitted a treatment to Carolco in 1993, which was a darker, more mature take on the Spider-Man mythos. In addition to Spider-Man's origin story, it also included reimagined versions of the villains Electro and Sandman. Electro was described as a megalomaniacal businessman named Carlton Strand, while Sandman was depicted as Strand's personal bodyguard. Cameron's treatment featured heavy profanity and a sex scene between Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson atop the Brooklyn Bridge. Carolco set a $50 million budget for the film, but progress stalled when Golan sued Carolco for attempting to make the film without his involvement. Cameron had recently completed True Lies (1994) for Twentieth Century Fox, and the studio unsuccessfully attempted to acquire the Spider-Man film rights for him. Cameron then abandoned the film and began work on Titanic (1997) and other projects. He revealed in a 1997 interview that he had the Titanic star Leonardo DiCaprio in mind for the role of Peter Parker.
In 1995, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) acquired 21st Century Film Corporation's rights to produce the film, which gave them access to previous Spider-Man scripts. MGM then sued Viacom, Sony Pictures, and Marvel, which they accused of fraud in the original deal with Cannon. The following year, 21st Century, Carolco, and Marvel all filed for bankruptcy.
Following the disastrous reception of Batman & Robin in 1997, film studios viewed comics as merely for children and did not take the superhero genre seriously. No studio showed interest in a Spider-Man film until the release of Blade in 1998 and the development of X-Men (2000), projects which convinced some studios that a Marvel character could carry a film. Marvel emerged from bankruptcy in 1998 and declared that Menahem Golan's option had expired and that the rights had reverted to them. Marvel then sold the rights to Sony for $7 million. Although Sony optioned from MGM all preceding Spider-Man screenplays, it only exercised the options on "the Cameron material", which contractually included a multi-author screenplay and a forty-five-page "scriptment" credited only to Cameron. However, the studio announced it was not hiring Cameron to direct the film nor would it be using his script.
Sony lined up several potential directors, including Michael Bay, Jan de Bont, Tim Burton, Chris Columbus, Roland Emmerich, David Fincher, Ang Lee, Baz Luhrmann, Tony Scott, M. Night Shyamalan and Barry Sonnenfeld. Fincher considered taking the job, but did not want to depict Spider-Man's origin story, as he felt it was "dumb". He proposed basing the film on The Night Gwen Stacy Died storyline, but the studio was not interested in that approach. Columbus turned down the project and directed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) instead.
The chair of Columbia Pictures, Amy Pascal, had a first choice for director: Sam Raimi, who was a fan of the Spider-Man comics during his youth. However, Raimi's agent warned him that he was not Sony's preferred choice. During a meeting with Pascal, Sony Pictures CEO John Calley, Marvel Films chief Avi Arad, Sony executive Matt Tolmach, and the film's producer, Laura Ziskin, Raimi pitched himself as the ideal director for the project. He abruptly ended his pitch after one hour, not wanting to overstay his welcome if the executives did not want him. However, Raimi's passion for Spider-Man earned him the job. He was attached to direct in January 2000, for a summer 2001 release.
David Koepp was brought aboard to write the screenplay. Cameron's script was the foundation for his first draft, often word for word. Koepp pitched the idea that Peter should not get his Spider-Man suit until halfway through the film, so his origin story could be lengthened. He also proposed that Peter and Mary Jane should not be a couple by the end of the film, feeling it was more romantic if they remained apart. In this version of the script, Electro was the main antagonist.
Koepp would eventually change the main antagonist to the Green Goblin and add Doctor Octopus as a secondary villain. However, Raimi cut Doctor Octopus from the story to focus on the surrogate father-son dynamic between Norman Osborn and Peter Parker, which he found interesting. In June 2000, Scott Rosenberg was hired to rewrite Koepp's material. Remaining a constant in all the rewrites was Cameron's idea that Peter shoots organic webbing from his wrists, as opposed to him inventing mechanical webshooters, which is how he shoots webs in the comics. Raimi felt the mechanical webshooters would stretch the audience's suspension of disbelief too far. This decision was controversial with long-time fans of the comics.
As production neared, Alvin Sargent was hired by Ziskin to polish the dialogue, primarily between Peter and Mary Jane. Although Rosenberg, Sargent, and Cameron all could have received credit for the final Spider-Man script, all three voluntarily relinquished credit to Koepp.
