It was a long and hard trek through Development Hell until a Spider-Man movie was released in 2002.
In the 1980s, The Cannon Group would acquire the rights to produce a Spider-Man movie. The remainder of the decade would see a series of false starts and tribulations until the studio would lose the rights, which would then be acquired by Carolco Pictures. But before that Cannon made no less than four pitches for the film (not including revised versions of the other scripts). After the first pitch: Jim Shooter's Spider-Man: Operation Z, studio heads Menahem Golan and Yorham Globus (in a combination of not understanding the source material and an attempt to cash in on commercial appeal) pitched a concept that would have turned Spider-Man into a spider, man, with Tobe Hooper slated to direct. After Stan Lee vetoed the concept, writers Ted Newsome and John Brancado would provide their own script. During this time Tobe Hooper would leave the project to work on his sequel for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and be replaced by Joseph Zito.
The barebones of the plot would have the college student Peter Parker get bitten by a spider that had been irradiated by an experiment conducted by Peter's Physics professor Otto Octavius, and see the young man go through the main beats of his Superhero Origin before being pitted against Professor Octavius, who was turned into Doc Ock in the same accident, and is trying to complete his experiment which risks destroying the city if not the world.
The script would go through multiple minor revisions before being shelved in favor of a different script which could be produced with a smaller budget, until being briefly revisited again as a last ditch attempt to get a Spider-Man movie off the ground.
The Newsom/Brancado script would see use again in 1992 when James Cameron used a copy as proof of concept for his own Spider-Man movie.
At the time that this script was being used, a number of actors were earmarked for specific parts: Scott Leva as Peter Parker, Bob Hoskins as Doc Ock, both Katharine Hepburn and Lauren Bacall were considered for Aunt May, and Stan the Man himself vied for the chance to play J. Jonah Jameson.
One such script can be read here
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The scripts include examples of…
- Adaptational Backstory Change: In the comics, Doc Ock gained technopathy after a freak lab accident fused him with his specially designed tentacle harness. Here, his waldos become part of him because of his Anti-Force experiment warped reality inside his laboratory.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: Peter's already working for Jameson before becoming Spider-Man in this version
- Adaptational Nice Guy: Flash Thompson, he still picks on Peter at first but he's a lot friendlier to him than he is in the comics.
- Adaptational Origin Connection: A constant in these scripts is that Peter Parker and Otto Octavius gain their powers in the same accident.
- Adaptational Origin Connection: The spider that bit Peter was irradiated by Octavius' "Anti-Force" experiment. In addition, Ock's assistant, Weiner, ends up being the burglar who killed Uncle Ben.
- Beleaguered Assistant: Weiner, Octavius' assistant in certain versions of the script.
- Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: In at least one script, Otto Octavius at no point referred to as either Doctor Octopus of Doc Ock. The closest is when he says "that's Professor Octopus to you".
- Named In The Adaptation: Spider-Man's agent is given the name Max Reiss in this version.
- Pretender Diss: Octavius insists he's the Real Spider-Man due to his Waldos acting as extra legs.
- Promoted to Love Interest: Played with in that while Liz Allen was a love interest of Peter's in the comics, they only ever expressed interest in each other and never actually dated.
