3) Michael Jackson Almost Bought Marvel In Order To Make A Spider-Man Movie
Let’s take a break from Spider-Man’s adventures on the page to bring you perhaps the strangest fact concerning Peter Parker’s cinematic history. Many actors have been offered or attempted to nab the part of the wallcrawler on film – from Tom Cruise to Charlie Sheen to Jake Gyllenhaal to Heath Ledger – but the most unlikely has to be Michael Jackson.
According to Stan Lee, he became good pals with the King of Pop back in the 1990s after Jackson contacted Lee in order to buy the rights to not only the Spider-Man character but the whole of Marvel. In fact, the pair of them were going to seize control of the company together, but the $1 billion dollar price tag proved too steep.
Jackson’s main interest in the purchase was to make a Spider-Man movie. Lee isn’t sure whether Jackson wanted to produce the film or star in it, but he suspects it was most likely both. So, in some alternate universe out there, there could exist a Spider-Man movie where Peter Parker moon walks up a wall…