With the premiere of SpiderMan: No Way Home here, fans are already on the hype train. Everyone seems to be talking about the colourful character, and this includes the award-winning director James Cameron, who he’s been sharing more about his cancelled Spider-Man project.
This may come as a surprise for many but, before developing Titanic, James Cameron was working on an epic Spider-Man film. According to the Terminator 2 director, it would have been the first big Hollywood Marvel superhero film, way before the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy.
But, what happened with this project?
“The greatest film I never made”
That’s how James Cameron refers to his cancelled Spider-Man film in a recent interview, after talking about the project and his vision for a film based on his childhood hero.
It was in 1993 when he submitted a script (co-written by Barry Cohen and Ted Newsom) to Carolco Pictures, the studio that held the rights of the character at the time.
Even though there was never a full official script for the film, there’s a lot of interesting things to see in the drafts we know of. For one, Leonardo DiCaprio was a contender for playing Peter Parker in the film.
Also, the extensive 80- to 90-page treatment outlining Cameron’s vision reveals a film both similar and different to Sam Raimi’s 2002 Spider-Man film.
Same character, different visions
Cameron and Raimi were both huge fans of the character, and as such, they both treated the story with great respect, to tell it the way it’s supposed to be. James Cameron tried to tell the origin story of the character by also exploring the younger years of Peter Parker and his early days as a superhero, including all the events that led to the death of Uncle Ben. That said, other drafts of the unfinished project also included a more adult Peter Parker and a more experienced Spider-Man facing different challenges.
Raimi’s Spider-Man was the first big superhero film to actually use the characters as colourful as they are in the comics, keeping in mind that up to that point every single superhero film aimed at creating more realistic versions of the costumes. Not surprisingly, James Cameron also aimed to make the character darker. And this goes for the villains too. So, instead of the colourful Spider-Man and villains, we’d have toned down, more serious-looking characters.
But the costumes weren’t the only elements that’d be more mature in Cameron’s version, as he also wanted to make it darker and more violent. Strong language, violence, and even some sexual elements were included in the package. Maybe more like a DCEU film than an MCU one.
Interestingly, before Tobey Maquire got the role, Leonardo DiCaprio was also approached for 2002’s Spider-Man film. Sadly, he turned down the opportunity and stated that he wasn’t ready to play a superhero.
Wrapping up
James Cameron’s Spider-Man would have been a great movie without a doubt. The mature context, the fidelity to the original content, and the direction could have been incredible. But at the same time, it may have not been as popular as Sam Raimi’s more accessible and universally beloved version of the character.
So, what happened to this project? After Carolco Pictures lost the rights to the character, Cameron’s film had to be cancelled and the project was canned forever.
