From Sam Raimi’s original “Spider-Man” trilogy soaring and then fizzling out to the failed ‘Amazing’ reboots, “Spider-Man” has had a rocky road to the success he’s enjoying now as part of the Marvel cinematic universe.
There was a time though when things could have gone differently. David Koepp, who penned many a blockbuster from “Jurassic Park” to “Mission: Impossible,” also penned Raimi’s first “Spider-Man” film in 2002.
Speaking with Collider recently, he revealed he had a completely different idea for the Raimi sequels which would have taken the films in a different direction:
“Basically [my trilogy idea] was the telling of the Gwen Stacy/Harry Osbourne story but I spaced everything out differently. I wanted Gwen to be killed in the middle of the second movie, because that follows sort of the ‘Empire Strikes Back’ model, and I had different villains I wanted to use. Just a different way to tell that story.”
Raimi’s trilogy didn’t introduce Gwen until the third film with Bryce Dallas Howard taking on the role, and the character didn’t die – only acting as something of a romantic foil. Koepp only penned the first then departed with Alvin Sargent and others taking over scripting duties for the next two films and the first ‘Amazing’ film.
When time came around to do “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” Sony called up Koepp to ask for his help but by that point he wasn’t interested:
“There was a time maybe seven or eight years ago when I was gonna come back for a couple ‘Spider-Man’ movies, after they’d done their first ‘Amazing Spider-Man.’ On the very first ‘Spider-Man’ I sort of planned out what I thought the first three movies should be, and then all the assorted personalities it didn’t work for me to keep writing the ‘Spider-Man’ movies.
So I was excited to come back and try to finish the story I started telling in the first one, and as we were about to agree that I was going to do that, I pulled out all the old stuff and I started outlining those two movies and I thought, ‘Boy, you can’t go home again. That moment has passed. The time when I was really feeling it was 10 years ago, and there’s no point in trying to recreate it.’ So I bailed.”
That second film did tackle the Gwen Stacy death storyline but ultimately never went any further as Marvel and Sony rebooted the property. Koepp’s fifth directorial effort, the Blumhouse horror tale “You Should Have Left,” is arriving on VOD on June 18th.
