With the announcement of Marc Webb stepping up to the director’s chair of Sony’s Spider-man reboot last week, Heat Vision has some interesting notes about the production and the future direction the franchise will be headed.
The plan for the movie is to be in the $80 million range and feature a cast of relative unknowns (so you can quash those Rob Pattinson or Gordon-Levitt rumors at this point). And the story will be pared down to center on a high school kid who is dealing with the knowledge that his uncle died even though the teen had the power to stop it.
Wow. I understand that using established actors like Willem Dafoe and Kirsten Dunst have higher salaries than the virtual unknown James Franco and Tobey Maguire (who only got $4,000,000, compared to the $17,000,000 he received for the sequel), but scaling back so much seems out of the ordinary. However, that is explained by the reasoning behind it that.
The touchstone for the new movie will not be the 1960s comics, which were the inspiration behind the movies by Raimi, who grew on up on them, but rather this past decade’s “Ultimate Spider-Man” comics by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley where the villain-fighting took a back seat to the high school angst.
It seems to me they are going backwards. Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man was made for a pretty hefty budget of an estimated $139,000,000 and to scale back. Of course this could all be proven wrong when the case is revealed. I just feel like a production like this, one that has made several billion dollars worldwide, the powers that be are trying to catch lightning in a bottle again, only they’re using a spoon and a frying pan.
Conan O’Brien recently said that cynicism doesn’t lead anywhere, and I believe that, but in light of these developments I’m not going to simply brush it off as a failure and a misstep, but more of a challenge to Sony to prove me wrong.
So, true believers and Rama readers, what do you think of this direction and future of this franchise?
January 24th, 2010 at 8:27 pm
Ugh… This is not heartening. I think some will find this more appealing, but I’m not a big fan of the Ultimate Spider-Man take, and am a huge fan of the Lee/Ditko books. Really, I guess it opens up some more possibilities, and it is certainly good impetus for a reboot, but quite honestly it sounds a little dull.
January 24th, 2010 at 8:43 pm
Gotta say, it might interesting to see what sounds like an idie level superhero film. Could work, could tank. But given my boredom with films that are all flash and no substance, I am inclined to give this a chance. And the source material can’t hurt.
Any chance BMB would be hired to write the screenplay (assuming MArvel can let him write less of their comics)?
January 24th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
Simon,
Actually Jamie Vanderbilt, who wrote “Zodiac” is on script duty.
January 24th, 2010 at 10:52 pm
tooo sooooooon!!
January 25th, 2010 at 3:11 am
Right now, my interest level in this has dropped to zero. The casting, and more specifically, the villian, would make it or kill it for me.
January 25th, 2010 at 5:51 am
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN is one of the four books I loan people to get them interested in superheroes — the other three being THE ULTIMATES, INVINCIBLE and HULK: THE END. So I’m happy on that front.
I’m glad all the big names are going away because I felt like the only one who ever nailed the part was J. Jonah Jameson and they’ll likely lock the unknowns into multi-picture contracts so we won’t have the drama and egos flaring when it comes time to do sequels. Take all that. Throw it out. It was always unnecessary.
Just having a teenage Spider-Man is moving in the right direction. Tobey was too old the moment they cast him.
Raimi’s special effects were always amateur, anyway, so having a new guy on board who hasn’t developed a signature style like Raimi probably means he’ll be more willing to listen to the people around him — experts like fight choreographers and special effects artists — so the budget doesn’t bother me, either.
And, for the love of God, let’s not give Spider-Man the key to the city anymore. That was always Superman’s shtick and removing the stress of Peter being a “good guy on the wrong side of the law” alleviates a lot of good angst and character development.
January 25th, 2010 at 8:49 am
I’d really hoped that a Spidey 4 movie would wash away the awful taste of of Spidey 3 and get things back on track. Really, how hard was it for the studio, Raimi, and everyone else involved see that The Lizard was the obvious choice for the villain, with the logical introduction of Kraven too? Barring that, I’d have loved Bruce Campbell as Mysterio.
Ultimate Spidey wasn’t bad, but it really wasn’t my thing so I never bought it. It’s certainly not what I’m looking for in a Spider-Man movie either. Taking Peter back to high school seems like a step in the WRONG direction to me. We saw that, briefly, in the first movie and I’m not interested in the whole “teenage angst” thing. Leave that to Twilight. We’ll see when it actually gets made, but right now I’m not the least bit interested in this project. Bring on the next Nolan Bat-movie!
January 25th, 2010 at 2:49 pm
@Shaun – While I agree on your very last point, “Bring on the next Nolan Bat-movie,” and on the basic point that a fourth would have given Raimi et. al. an opportunity to wash the stink of failure off the franchise after the third, I disagree vehemently that teen angst is outside of Spidey’s wheelhouse. It’s what drove the character for ages, and frankly we should be capitalizing on the fact that it’s selling right now, not fleeing from it just because things like “Twilight” have made it the exlusive province of semiliterate high-school girls.
January 25th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
That’s ridiculous. There is no way the budget for that movie is going to be $60 million less than the budget for the first film, made 8(?) years earlier. I don’t care if you film the whole thing on one set and cast people off the street in every role, if they are going to put even one major action set piece in it the movie would still cost more than $80 million.
January 25th, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Sounds like “Spidey the CW” show: unknown teens, high-school, low-budget (for hollywood). Definitely not what you’d expect given the recent super-hero movie successes: big effects, big stars. but hey, at least it’s not a musical (is it?)
January 25th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
shrug
Get the right people and you could do this for $50 million—and thats mostly for FX. Get the wrong people, and $200 million couldn’t get you even a passable movie (and THAT’S been proven over and over again).
January 25th, 2010 at 5:26 pm
My interest is now zero too.
As a parent I get to deal with more than enough “high school angst.” I don’t like it in reality, and I don’t want to watch it in the theater. Right now this is at the level of “I won’t complain too much if someone else wants to Redbox it.”
January 25th, 2010 at 8:08 pm
@Russ: Oh, don’t get me wrong my friend… I didn’t say that there’s no room in Spidey for “teen angst.” I recognize that very thing was a part of what made the character so unique, and endearing, back in the Lee/Ditko days. I have several collections of those stories. Great stuff, given the time period. I just think we got our taste of that in the first Raimi/Maguire movie and there’s little point in looking back.
I mean, Peter Parker hasn’t been in high school in the funny books since… Well, when? I bought my first Spidey books in the late 70′s and he wasn’t in high school anymore. So the nerdy high school Peter really isn’t “my” Peter Parker, and I guess I just see it as kind of quaint. I don’t need to see Flash Thompson terrorizing him again. I got to see Peter kick Flash’s ass in the first movie, and that was great. Enough, now move on.
If you’re taking Spidey back to his “roots” in the reboot, OK. Maybe. If you’re using Ultimate Spidey as your template, again, OK. But… It’s not like the Spider-Man franchise had bottomed out or anything. The last one bombed on an artistic level, certainly, but let’s not forget that it still made a ton of money and reviews were (oddly) better than they had any right to be (same goes for Superman Returns, come to think of it).
I think a Spidey 4 could’ve redeemed the whole franchise (shit, I’d have been tempted to have Peter wake up and find out all the events in Spidey 3 were a dream). It’s frustrating to know that Dr. Connors was being built up over the course of the three movies and yet Raimi and the studio were arguing (again) over villains and apparently none of them were The Lizard.
Ultimately (no pun intended), it just seems way too soon for a reboot… while there’s “teen angst” in Spidey’s history, I just think, like Deco said above, I think this will end up looking like “Spider-Man 90210,” and that’s just not something I’m interested in.
Really, I think Ultimate Spider-Man might make for a better animated TV show. I think that was, maybe, sort of the idea behind the “Spectacular” series, though that show was too kiddie for my taste. I know a lot of people liked it, and that’s cool, but it wasn’t for me.
January 31st, 2010 at 4:02 am
This confuses me. All the films made a ton of money, even the “failure” of part 3. Even if they recast everybody with cheap no-names, there is no reason not to continue moving the story forward. Then you get to introduce new villains and situations. They can even change up the tone of the movie if they think it is a problem. It’s the same as the James Bond movies or Batman after Burton. They replace everybody, change tone, and keep rolling along. When the series finally hits rock bottom, with no where to go, then you reboot.
January 31st, 2010 at 12:47 pm
@Paco – I think you inadvertently hit the nail on the head. There’s a general sense out there that the Batman films after Burton were a disaster, and I think the stink of “Batman & Robin” has led everyone with a valuable franchise to market, to think a reboot is a more viable means of resetting expectations than pretending nobody notices your guy growing four inches and changing voices and costumes.
@Joseph – I don’t think that’s true. If they can make “Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back,” which admittedly didn’t have stylish or amazing effects but DID utilize explosions, stunts, guns, CGI waterfalls, etc. etc., for under $20M, they could make a more down-to-earth Spidey flick for more than twice that.