SPIDEY 4 becomes AMAZING becomes Marvel's SPIDER-MAN

Post by **Vernadyn** » January 13th, 2010, 3:00 pm

Yeah, it's probably a bad idea to reboot this soon, especially with the three Raimi/Maguire/Dunst films being so popular. And the third one, like Shrek 3, did make a big pot of money, even if it didn't match the first two in quality.

Post by **eddievalient** » January 13th, 2010, 4:09 pm

The only problem I had with the third one is that it really should have been a two parter. The film should have ended with Eddie Brock becoming Venom, fade out, To Be Continued, credits. Then followed by a fourth film that gave the Venom story room to breathe rather than being shoehorned into the last 30 minutes. Oh well, shoulda, coulda, woulda.

Post by **PatrickvD** » January 14th, 2010, 8:59 am

eddievalient wrote:No, it would still be in Marvel's hands. Disney pretty much said that they were going to leave Marvel alone. I believe the quote was, "If it ain't broke..."

that's not what I meant. If all the studios lose their rights to these films, they end up back at Marvel. And with Marvel now being owned by Disney, they'd be the ones distributing their films from then on.

Why else would they reboot Fantastic Four and Spider-Man so soon? If Disney has half of all the superheroes in their canon due to owning Marvel, they'd become a huge force in Hollywood.

Spider-Man is Sony's only really big franchise. They'd do whatever it takes to keep it.

Post by **EricJ** » January 14th, 2010, 11:49 am

PatrickvD wrote:Why else would they reboot Fantastic Four and Spider-Man so soon? If Disney has half of all the superheroes in their canon due to owning Marvel, they'd become a huge force in Hollywood.
Spider-Man is Sony's only really big franchise. They'd do whatever it takes to keep it.

Marvel was rebooting FF because what Fox did with it was the one movie that convinced them to make their own--They didn't want to see the characters' film chances "thrown away" permanently.

As for Spidey's reboot, as noted that's Sony trying a bit of saber-rattling against Sam Raimi over "who owns" the hit franchise...
Very, very similar to Disney arrogantly claiming they could make Toy Story 3 without Pixar--just on title ownership and how-hard-could-it-be--back before they found out they couldn't.

Post by **eddievalient** » January 14th, 2010, 1:13 pm

I like the FF movies, but then again, I always did have a tendancy to enjoy movies that everyone else seems to hate (like Ang Lee's Hulk. What? It's bad just because it's artistic? He was trying to prove that comic book movies could trancend the medium and be real art. The haters completely missed the entire point of the movie).

Post by **Vernadyn** » January 14th, 2010, 3:05 pm

Wow! I liked Ang Lee's Hulk too! Not quite as much as Speed Racer, another film I liked that everyone else (except Ben) seemed to hate, but I enjoyed it. It's not Lee's best film or the best superhero film, but the sheer amount of vitriol people reserve for it is frankly rather frightening.

Oh, and I think splitting up Spider-Man 3 would have been a better idea too. Kind of like how they should have split the Pheonix thing from the cure thing for X-Men 3. They had similar climaxes too; once the first villain was defeated, you knew that it was time to fight the second villain.

Post by **Ben** » January 14th, 2010, 4:05 pm

Said it before and will say it again...the first half of Hulk is a brilliant movie adaptation of the comic book medium.

The Spidey news sucks! I suggested the Venom for a fourth film too, in my review of 3...that would have been a totally good cliffhanger, allowing the series to continue into another film, introducing a new villain at the end of each until they reached their goal of 6.

Now that won't happen...we're going to get The Phantom Menace of Spidey now, which wasn't that the basic plot of the first one from, oooohhh, all the way back to <I>less than ten years ago!</I>?

Post by **eddievalient** » January 14th, 2010, 6:03 pm

To be fair (and play devil's advocate for a minute), he was only in high school for the first half of the first film, but in the comics, they kept him in high school for years (which Bendis also did in the Ultimate books). If Sony has to start over, their approach does make sense.

Post by **Dacey** » January 14th, 2010, 6:20 pm

Yes, but why have the reboot now?

Why reboot when you already have a great cast?

Why reboot when you worked so freaking hard to get Kirsten Dunst back?

Why reboot when you announced that John Malkavich would play the villain only days ago?

If you're going to do this, wait another ten years or so. Don't do it this freaking soon!

GeorgeC · Post by **GeorgeC** » January 14th, 2010, 7:51 pm

It's because this is another case of executives thinking they know better than the creative people who are involved with films on a day-to-day basis.

The Sony execs are NOT fans of the Spider-Man character, either. They see him as a brand. The same way that Marvel generally sees the character as a brand... It's never a studio executive or comics editor that makes the characters and stories great --- it's the creative people who understand the characters and love them. Suits just don't get this and think directors and actors are interchangeable with characters. Ditto with the mentality towards artists and writer teams at comic book companies who don't happen to be pals of the Editor-in-Chief!

I'm sorry, but Sony brass got the mistaken impression that Spider-Man 3 was a better film because THEY INTERFERED with it. Box office receipts being higher on that film than the first two didn't help their bloated egos, either.

Of course, I could tell them that that DVDs and Blu rays for Spider-Man 3 SOLD WORSE than the first two films generally did and that a lot of Spidey 3 BDs only sold when Best Buy was offering in a two-for-one sale on BDs!

==> That's when I bought my Spidey 3 BD because otherwise there was no way I would pay full price for that film! Heck, I wouldn't have bought it, period, without that special sale.

**********

A lot of executives are divorced from reality. They're MBAs... These are NOT creative people or the types that deal with hard, cold reality beyond numbers that can be manipulated any way you like!

Bean counters generally don't understand product or the attitudes and likes of their audience. They're frustrated by creativity and imagination.

Somebody like Walt Disney is pretty rare --- both a decent executive and highly creative.

Post by **ShyViolet** » January 14th, 2010, 8:26 pm

This is really disappointing! I also would have loved to see Venom and maybe even Carnage in a new Spidey film (villains that are scary and not just misunderstood).

And after all this time still no Lizard? That's just ridiculous.

Post by **Ben** » January 15th, 2010, 7:48 am

The bottom line is...the bottom line.

If Sony don't keep making Spidey films they lose the franchise rights back to Marvel/Disney, who would then launch their own film series.

So Sony will basically keep making whatever crud it likes until the box office receipts stop ringing in high. At that point, they'll have squeezed the franchise to death and will willingly hand it back to Marvel.

The thing is for Sony just to keep pumping these things out, just like Fox is prone to do with X-Men and Fantastic Four (and Warner Bros. is required to do, within the next two years, for Superman). As long as the companies make the movies, they keep the movie rights. And as long as those movies keep making profit (however small), they'll keep making them (however bad).

Post by **EricJ** » January 15th, 2010, 10:40 am

Dacey wrote:Yes, but why have the reboot now?

Why reboot when you already have a great cast?

You do the reboot yourself now, to scare the cast and director into coming back after they threatened to quit.

Cheap studio power-play, but hey, it happens, and it's Sony's expensive funeral, not Raimi's.

Ben wrote:If Sony don't keep making Spidey films they lose the franchise rights back to Marvel/Disney, who would then launch their own film series.

Um, yeah...That too.
Which is why Fox also won't give up on X-Men:Origins after Wolverine, and why they still claim to want to reboot FF and Daredevil, after dragging their heels so long about it.

Post by **Dan** » January 20th, 2010, 1:00 am

Sony has announced that Marc Webb, director of (500) Days of Summer, will be helming the reboot.

Post by **eddievalient** » January 20th, 2010, 11:51 am

Also, as I hoped, the film will be based on Brian Michael Bendis' "Ultimate Spider-Man". Assuming they actually adapt the story (as opposed to merely giving it lip service), it should be excellent. They could even use "Ultimate Spider-Man" for the film's title to distinguish it from the other series.