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Image via Sony

‘Cos it’s dumb’: David Fincher’s thoughts on Spider-Man’s origin story might explain why Sony decided he wasn’t the right man for the job

Back in the day, launching a superhero franchise without an origin story was heresy.

Looking at how we’ve seen 11 feature films starring three different actors in the title role in the space of 21 years – including one that saw the trio team up – it’s incredible to think that Spider-Man was one of development hell’s longest-tenured residents before Sam Raimi dragged it onto the screen.

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Almost two decades were spent trying to bring everybody’s favorite friendly neighborhood superhero to cinemas, and some of Hollywood’s biggest names were attached at various points. Arguably the most famous – besides James Cameron, of course – was David Fincher, but he wasn’t interested in an origin story.

Ironically, the Marvel Cinematic Universe debuted Tom Holland’s Peter Parker without the setup because you’d have to travel pretty far to find somebody who doesn’t know how the teenage photography enthusiast got his abilities, but two decades ago the prospect of launching a comic book franchise without an origin story was unthinkable.

As Fincher put it to The Guardian, his plan was to actively skip the radioactive spider and focus on Peter as an established Spider-Man dealing with life as a young adult. The problem was that Sony “weren’t f*cking interested,” as he recalled with a chuckle.

“And I get it. They were like: ‘Why would you want to eviscerate the origin story?’ And I was like: ‘’Cos it’s dumb?’ That origin story means a lot of things to a lot of people, but I looked at it and I was like: ‘A red and blue spider?’ There’s a lot of things I can do in my life and that’s just not one of them.”

David Fincher’s Spider-Man would have been something, without a doubt, but Raimi turned out to be the perfect candidate for the job, with the iconic wall-crawler as popular among current audiences as he’s ever been.


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Scott Campbell
News, reviews, interviews. To paraphrase Keanu Reeves; Words. Lots of words.