“Are you kidding me? It could be worth, I don’t know, a billion!” : James Cameron almost made Spider-Man before Titanic, but the studio didn’t believe him

4 – When was this supposed to come out?

We are in the first half of the 1990s. James Cameron just released Terminator 2: Judgment Day and there’s still no progress on his gigantic Titanic. So he started writing a Spider-Man movie. There’s no release date set as he doesn’t even have a distributor to release the film to the public, but he’s starting the project anyway.

4 seconds of Titanic are blurry!

3 – What was the scenario?

The script never really saw the light of day, but the “treatment” signed by James Cameron (often a detailed synopsis accompanied by visuals) was the famous Electric and Sandman against Peter Parker.

In 2021, Cameron told Screencrush : “I think it would have been very different. I didn’t write a line that wasn’t like that. The first thing you have to understand is that it wasn’t Spider-Man, it was Spider-Man. There’s a geek in high school that no one notices and socially It is unpopular.”

The origin of his powers is supposed to come from a biological force from a radioactive spider bite, an element that was later added to Raimi’s films as well as the comics. Cameron adds that Peter Parker’s powers were meant to be a metaphor for his puberty:

One was bitten by a spider. (…) He’s making a hideous suit that needs to be improved, and the big problem is the damn suit. (…) I wanted to anchor it in reality, in an experience that was universal.

What was in this detailed treatment Purchased from IGNSandman contacts Spidey to join his gang and make money together. Peter refuses, and the villain begins a smear campaign against the young man, who holds himself guilty of all the crimes committed by the gang. This is what Elektro, presented here as an unscrupulous businessman, is trying to do.

In anticipation, we find Mary Jane in love with Spider-Man, who gets her out of a bad situation without knowing it’s her friend Peter and Uncle Ben’s death at the hands of a rogue. In the movie, Aunt May is sick and Peter needs money to pay his hospital bills, so Peter tries 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 was immediately believable.”

2 – with what casting?

Even before turning TitanicJames Cameron wanted Leonardo DiCaprio to play the young Peter Parker, but Edward Furlong was also considered. Arnold Schwarzenegger has reportedly been approached to play one of the supervillains. Nikki Cox, then the heroine of the TV series Unhappily Ever After, would play Mary Jane Watson.

But the film didn’t take off until these actors got real offers.

1 – Why didn’t it happen?

The Cannon company, known for its quickly produced and quickly released films, had owned the rights to the character since the 1980s, but recently lost them when it went bankrupt in 1994.

So, logically, Cameron went with his script to Carolco Pictures, the firm that had just distributed Terminator 2. But the studio, which had just gone bankrupt in 1995 after the disastrous release of Renny Harlin’s Pirate Island, couldn’t. to follow

“All of a sudden the movie was free. I tried to convince Fox to buy it, but the rights were a little unclear, Sony 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 then 10 billion…”

Indeed, the Spider-Man films have since brought fortunes to Sony, which has distributed three Sam Raimi films since 2002, two by Marc Webb and three by Jon Watts. In the same universe, Sony also released the Venom trilogy Morbius and soon Madame Web and Ravenclaw.