What Could Have Been / Spider-Man

Concept suit for The Amazing Spider-Man.

The number of canceled and scrapped projects and/or elements related to the comics, the Spider-Man Trilogy, The Amazing Spider-Man Series, and Spider-Man: Spider-Verse are staggering.

Scrapped elements involving Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe can be found here.

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The following have their own pages:

• Sony's Spider-Man Universe
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series
• The Spectacular Spider-Man

Comics

Comics

Spider-Man

• The Green Goblin was originally imagined by Stan Lee as a supernatural villain, a demon trapped inside a Egyptian-like sarcophagus and accidentally freed by a movie crew. Steve Ditko, however, decided to make him a human villain instead. Rumors after Ditko's departure claimed that he reportedly wanted the Green Goblin to be a Stranger Behind the Mask, but this has been debunked by Ditko and by other researchers who note the Foreshadowing in the comics about Norman Osborn being a villainous figure, and that the Marvel Method as per Lee's own comments, indicated that Ditko entirely handled the plotting and setup by that time. Ditko points out that he had planted Norman Osborn in Jameson's business club, planted his son (who had the same hairstyle) in Peter's college crowd, and points that out there was never real ambiguity about who Green Goblin was intended to be.
• Stan Lee originally wanted the Vulture to be a fat, physically imposing villain, using actor Sydney Greenstreet for inspiration. Ditko didn't like the idea, arguing that a character like the Vulture should rely on speed and maneuverability to be a threat. Lee's original idea for the Vulture would later be recycled for The Kingpin.
• Jack Kirby's design for Spider-Man resembled a more traditional superhero.
• Steve Ditko being a Reclusive Artist that makes Thomas Pynchon look accessible abruptly quit working on Spider-Man on Issue 38. Since Ditko in his long life never gave interviews to fanzines and others, and pointedly refused to discuss his past work in detail, it's a source of wonder among fans what direction Spider-Man could have taken had he stayed around. He and Lee fell out and weren't even speaking to each other by the time of the final ten issues which Ditko entirely plotted out and drew on his own with little feedback from Lee. Some of the rumors for his departure^note i.e. that he disagreed with Norman being the Goblin, which happened in the issue following his departure have been debunked by Ditko himself. Others argue that Ditko who later took to Objectivism wanted to make Spider-Man into a more objectivist and right-leaning direction. Ditko himself mentioned as did others, that it stemmed from personal dissatisfaction for not getting proper remuneration and respect for his contribution to Spider-Man (namely the fact that Ditko was paid for his work as an artist when as per the Marvel Method he was actually the co-writer of the entire thing with Lee contributing mainly as dialogue writer), that he wasn't given remuneration for redrawing pages whenever Lee asked him to, burdened by the fact that Spider-Man's runaway success left him little means to profit from it.
• Tom DeFalco had intended to reunite Peter and Mary Jane with their daughter at the end of his run on Amazing Spider-Man, but his successors, Howard Mackie and John Byrne, wanted to bring Spidey back to his classic everyman roots and requested his long dead Aunt May be brought back to life instead. As luck would have it, Mackie and Byrne's stint on ASM was a critical and commercial disaster, and Tom was given the opportunity to produce a one-shot "What If?" based on the premise of the daughter being alive and well inheriting her father's legacy. The "What If?" was a success and led to a twelve year run for Tom on the Spider-Girl book, which fast became the longest running female-led superhero book in the history of Marvel Comics.
• Rob Kirkman pitched two separate mini-series focusing on the Spider-Man villain Cardiac.
• Spider-Man: Chapter One was going to be followed by a Spider-Man: Chapter Two miniseries. The rebooted The Amazing Spider-Man was already using elements from Chapter One like Captain Power, and newer stories would have continued treating Chapter One as the official version. The backlash towards the reboot and initiative however nixed this quickly.
• Spider-Man vs. Wolverine was originally supposed to end with Wolverine actually defeating Spider-Man, but the outcome was changed to a stalemate after some Marvel staffers complained about the result.
• Venom:
  • Instead of Eddie Brock, the Venom symbiote was originally supposed to go from Parker to a woman who had a grudge of her own against Spider-Man. The story was to be that a cabbie watching Spider-Man as he was driving hit and kills her husband trying to flag him down, she was also pregnant at the time, but lost the child. Marvel at the time, also felt that readers would not view a woman as a physical threat to Spidey (nevermind the fact that a woman with the Venom symbiote would by definition be physically stronger than Spidey, just like scrawny Cletus Kasady is with the Carnage symbiote), and in turn became something of a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy in that Spidey doesn't have many memorable female villains For kicks, here's the article.
  • Similarly, Venom was intended to be killed off in issue 400 (he first appeared in issue 300), so the symbiote could move on to other characters, like J. Jonah Jameson. It was swiftly killed when Venom gained popularity.
  • Had the Flash Thompson Venom series not been cancelled, Cullen Bunn would have brought back Anti-Venom, with the new host being the unnamed soldier (a character that had previously been mentioned, but never actually shown) who had bonded with the Venom symbiote before Flash. There were also plans for a "War of the Symbiote" arc where every still-living former Venom host (Peter Parker, Eddie Brock, Mac Gargan, ect.) would have battled for control of the suit, with Flash finally learning Peter was Spider-Man in the process.
• When J. Michael Straczynski thought up his ridiculously controversial Sins Past storyline which revealed that Gwen Stacy had a child with Norman Osborn, he planned for Peter Parker to be the childrens' father, but Joe Quesada, the EIC of Marvel, felt that this would age the character too much and suggested Norman Osborn instead.
• J. Michael Straczynski, then still the writer of The Amazing Spider-Man, originally planned a very different version of One More Day, in which many events in Peter's life were changed by his helping Harry Osborn through his drug addiction. This would result in Norman Osborn never returning to being the Green Goblin, Gwen Stacy never dying, Harry and MJ never breaking up, and, in effect, Peter never marrying MJ. This was vetoed by other writers even if Quesada was actually open and on board with the idea. They disliked bringing Gwen Stacy back because it was part of a classic storyline and Quesada didn't want to make all the stories of the past 35 years moot, being okay with making the 21 years of the Spider-Marriage moot. In either case, Harry Osborn was temporarily brought Back from the Dead for a number of years, before Nick Spencer's run ultimately revealed he was a clone of the original.
  • Comic retailer and Youtube personality Comics By Perch revealed that there have been at least two pitches by major Marvel writers to undo One More Day entirely that have been rejected by editorial. The identity of these two writers has never been publicly disclosed.
• Gwen Stacy:
  • Stan Lee has said several times that he originally intended Gwen to be Peter's one-and-only, and that MJ was created as competition for Gwen. On account of the fact that Mary Jane Watson was a Breakout Character and immediate success, and regarded by fans (and later Lee himself) as the more interesting character, this ultimately didn't take. Lee and Romita did many things to make Gwen interesting, including changing her character several times, making her resemble MJ (including doing a blonde Palette Swap of MJ's hair-style while giving MJ a bad hair-do and having her go out of state for many issues), having her work as a bikini model (to show she's not all prim to compete with the sexy MJ), and even giving her a dramatic arc (the death of her father George Stacy who she wrongfully blamed Spider-Man for), and having her talk smack to Aunt May as a way to make her cool. Most readers saw all of this as Character Shilling and rejected it. Had things been different, i.e. had Lee come up with a decent way to make Gwen cool and interesting or if readers really cared for the Peter/Gwen romance, she would probably have remained alive and become the Official Couple with Peter. By the time Lee wrote the Newspaper strip several years after stepping down as writer at Marvel, he settled on Mary Jane as Peter's true love, with the newspaper strip never even having a Gwen Stacy, and never looked back. According to Conway, Lee's reaction on hearing the proposal to kill Gwen was merely a shrug as he walked away to a business trip.
  • Gerry Conway, who wrote the now iconic comic The Night Gwen Stacy Died after Lee had stepped down decided to kill Gwen Stacy, because he, like most readers (he was 19 years old at the time and had the unique distinction and claim to actually belong to Peter Parker's generation in chronological terms and was definitely far in tune with the readers' opinions than Lee and Romita were) felt MJ was the more interesting character, and that she and Peter had better chemistry and potential (being both as Conway put it, "damaged people").
  • The story was almost The Night Aunt May Died or The Night Mary Jane Watson Died. Shortly after Gerry Conway joined the comic, John Romita convinced him that one of their storylines should involve killing off a main character. Aunt May was the original choice, but the two would later shoot this idea down because of how predictable it would be. After more considerations, they narrowed the victim down to either Mary Jane Watson or Gwen Stacy. The latter was ultimately chosen because she was the Love Interest, and therefore considered more "bullet proof" and unexpected by the readers and so far more shocking, and Conway in any case was against killing his favorite character, whose untapped potential he wanted to explore. The final page of #122 was also different. Gil Kane's original page would have Mary Jane returning to Peter's side and holding him as he mourned. Gerry thought it didn't work right and allowed John Romita Sr. to redraw it.
  • The initial response to Gwen Stacy's death was considerable, especially among younger readers and audiences as opposed to long-time ones. Stan Lee, ever the crowd-pleaser, then suggested that Marvel undo Gwen's death and bring her back. Neither Conway nor Romita were okay with this (since at the time, Marvel had certainly not done the Back from the Dead thing very much) but they settled on a compromise which led to the notorious first Clone Saga which teased the idea that Gwen Stacy had returned at a time when Peter and MJ were developing strong feelings and the former was moving on from Gwen. If readers disliked the Peter MJ hook-up then Gwen would have been back then and there, without any of the cloning baggage of later stories. As it happened, readers did like MJ more than Gwen so it stuck.
• Superior Spider Man nearly happened a year or two earlier. Many at the staff wanted it to happen after Spider-Island, but Dan Slott thought it was too early to pull it off (he wanted to do the switch over at 700) and, thus, created Ends of the Earth.
  • Superior Spider-Man was also supposed to have lasted longer, according to Dan Slott. However, between Spider-Verse and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, it was decided to stop and put Peter back in control.
• Prior to writing The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows for the Secret Wars (2015) event, Dan Slott had repeatedly pitched for the return of the Spider-Marriage to editorial, and was shot down at every turn.
• The Clone Saga was going to be revealed as the work of Mephisto, but it was decided that it would be stupid for Mephisto to get involved with Spider-Man.
  • The one-shot 101 Ways to End The Clone Saga showcased a number of other ideas that were shot down, including killing Ben during Onslaught, having one of the two Parkers come down with short-term amnesia after an explosion, confusing him as to if he was Ben or Peter due to the fact that his hair would be brown again, putting Peter through a Stable Time Loop, etc.
  • Harry Osborn was originally going to be revealed as the mastermind behind the Clone Saga. The idea was that Gaunt, a mysterious armored villain that had menaced Spider-Man, was actually Harry, whose body had been ravaged and withered by the Goblin serum. Bob Harras vetoed the idea, as he thought Harry was a poor substitute for the real Green Goblin. One could assume this forgotten concept was retooled for The Amazing Spider-Man (2018), with Kindred revealed as a demonic magical-duplicate of Harry, embodying his insanity from his tenure as the Goblin, believed to be a late-arriving consequence of Secret Wars (2015).
  • The mini-series Spider-Man: The Final Adventure was originally going to end with Mary Jane giving birth, but this was changed to a miscarriage later down the line after it was decided that Peter would be brought back as Spider-Man.
• When he was writing Spider-Man 2099, Peter David had intended for the Goblin (a Legacy Character of the Green Goblin) to be Father Jennifer, the sister of his love interest Dana D'Angelo. However, when he left the book during the Writer Revolt following the removal of Joey Cavalieri as the Marvel 2099's editor, David's replacements, Ben Raab and Terry Kavanagh, revealed it was Miguel's brother, Gabriel. It was later retconned to be an impostor, but it was ironic, considering Peter David was the one who "revealed" that the Hobgoblin was Ned Leeds, which went against Hobgoblin Roger Stern's original intention and that "reveal" was itself retconned.^note Stern had intended for it to Roderick Kingsley and with the Hobgoblin Lives mini-series, he revealed that this was indeed the case and Kingsley had used Leeds as a patsy. However, much like Stern and Kingsley, David revealed in the 2014 series that Jennifer was indeed the Goblin.
• Speaking of which, Tom DeFalco had wanted to reveal that the Hobgoblin was Richard Fisk, the son of The Kingpin. His other idea was that Roderick Kingsley (Stern's original choice for the Hobgoblin) would turn out to be another villain, the Rose. Ironically, this ended up going the complete opposite route; Kingsley was ultimately revealed to be the Hobgoblin (years later), while Fisk was revealed to be the Rose.
• The legendary storyline Kraven's Last Hunt was originally a story between Wonder Man and his brother, the Grim Reaper. Marvel didn't like it, so it was sent to DC, repurposed as a storyline between Batman and The Joker. DC didn't like it either, so it was repurposed again as this. Likewise, J. M. DeMatteis originally wrote the story before the decision was taken to marry Peter and MJ, and once that happened, he changed the story again which ended up becoming the first story of a married Spider-Man, a decision that Matteis welcomed and celebrates since according to him it gave the story the emotional center it would not have had otherwise.
• According to Brian Michael Bendis, the ending of Spider-Men was supposed to have led to the introduction of an Earth-616 version of Miles Morales, who would have then joined the cast of Amazing Spider-Man as Peter's new friend, but Marvel wanted their Miles to remain consistent with his original appearance and story. Miles's Earth-616 counterpart would not be introduced until the Spider-Men II miniseries, but as a quite unhinged villain, ironically enough with the goal of travelling to the Ultimate Universe to find its counterpart of his dead girlfriend.
• Sean McKeever pitched a Spin-Off of Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane that would have starred Firestar, but Marvel was more interested in a continuation of the original series, something that McKeever didn't want to do. Two years later, he changed his mind and pitched a new Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane story that would have been set in winter and featured MJ and Peter in a Love Triangle with a teenage Johnny Blaze. Unfortunately, by that point, Marvel no longer had any desire to revive the series.
• In 2018, there were plans to have Miles Morales abandon the Spider-Man name in favor of a new identity, rumored to be "Spy-D" (which wound up being used as his codename in the Marvel's Spider-Man cartoon). Despite the seeds for this change clearly being set up in Miles' own book and the Generations event, a combination of Brian Michael Bendis jumping ship from Marvel to DC and the success of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse led to these plans being dropped.
• Stan Lee has gone on record as saying that initially he and Romita thought Gwen should be Peter's main girlfriend albeit he also accepted that MJ was a more popular and interesting character than Gwen. Lee has also been open to seeing Spider-Man being married (as he pointed out that it was realistic for a serious committed guy like Peter, as opposed to some ladies' men like Johnny Storm and Iron Man, to want to settle down)^note When Lee was EIC for most of The '60s, Marvel hadn't imposed Comic-Book Time and had real-time aging, and during that time Lee had married couples such as Reed and Sue Richard and Hank and Janet. It's been hinted by Lee and Romita that had Gwen Stacy not been killed off, she might've ended up married to Peter. Some stories, like House Of M, have toyed with this idea. But in either case, Lee who was always open to fan reaction and feedback (and generally quite a hands-off and open-minded editor hence his nonchalant original reaction to Gerry Conway's pitch about killing Gwen) quickly made MJ Peter's love interest and in the newspaper strip made them the only couple, and later had Peter married in his newspaper strip, which entirely unintentionally on his part, led to the marriage in regular continuity anyway.
• Former EIC Jim Shooter claimed in a 2000 interview for CBR that Bill Mantlo, when he was writer on The Spectacular Spider-Man in The '80s tried to pitch an idea to his editor and then Shooter himself about Felicia Hardy becoming pregnant with Peter's illegitimate child. Shooter told him on the spot that it's not happening because the idea of a moral icon like Peter having a child out of wedlock would bring down the wrath of the bible belt down on them, while also scaring away all of Marvel's sponsors who were using Spider-Man as a license. What Mantlo might have planned with that story and his intentions for it are unfortunately unknown since an accident that he suffered left him injured and suffering from permanent brain damage. A similar plot was actually featured in the DLC for the Spider-Man (PS4) game where it turns out to be a con played by Felicia on clueless Pete.
• David Michelinie said in interviews that his initial idea for Venom was that she would be a woman who lost her child as a result of collateral damage in a Spider-Man battle. He foreshadowed and built up Venom's appearance in Web of Spider-Man with this in mind and initially he saw Venom as a minor character. However, when he had gotten the post as head-writer on ASM, the flagship title and when planning out the milestone issue of #300 he pitched Venom's debut and he very quickly changed the character to Eddie Brock. Michelinie also said that towards the end of his run he had a plan for a year long arc where Peter Parker revealed his identity to the public. This would have been temporary and reversed. It would have involved villains, and other bad guys targeting him and his family, and then Peter would turn to the government for help, and basically be drafted as a mercenary doing shady things to protect his family and that eventually Peter would turn to the help of the Purple Man to erase the memories of his secret identity via world healing mind-wipe (similar to Michelinie's Emperor Doom graphic novel where Dr. Doom attached Purple Man to a power amplifier that made the rest of the world accept Dr. Doom as the new lord and master). The idea was rejected by editors as straining credibility that Peter's identity could simply be reset like that but in broad-strokes Civil War could have happened before.
• Young Allies offered Anya Corazon a potential chance to shine. It had a cast with the potential to create a very interesting character dynamics, and which Anya shone through as the most down to Earth, and easiest to relate to character. But it was killed by poorly written out enemies, an uninteresting and almost generic story arc, and a refusal by Sean McKeever to give the team any sort of cohesion in spite of their common purpose and motivations. It really seemed the team was finally coming together by the 5th issue or so, but by then the series was canceled. The Young Allies have been popping up here and there however, most recently in Spider-Island.
• Marvel's decision to cancel the Spider-Man newspaper strip in early 2019 meant the planned storyline chronicling Peter and MJ's adventures in Australia never happened. The plans were for Peter to battle The Kangeroo.
• Spider-Man: The Gilded Cage was a canceled mid-80s graphic novel that had Spider-Man get mowed down by a machine gun and be nursed back to health by Carla DelVeccio, a mob boss's wife, and eventually romance her. Jim Shooter approved the story but the artist team was delayed so much that by the time they got to work on it, the editor had changed to Tom DeFalco, who killed the story. What remains of the story can be found as a rough draft, a Cracked article with some pages colored in, and a summary with some black-and-white pencils.

Films

Spider-Man

Spider-Man

• Leonardo DiCaprio was the first choice for the role of Peter Parker before Tobey Maguire was cast, but turned down the offer due to his reluctance to committing to a multi-movie franchise. DiCaprio was previously considered for Spider-Man in James Cameron's script treatment.
  • Jude Law, Heath Ledger, Chris O'Donnell, Wes Bentley, Chris Klein and Freddie Prinze Jr. were also considered for the part of Peter Parker. Bentley would go on to portray Blackheart in Ghost Rider, while Law would play Yon-Rogg in Captain Marvel set within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
  • Scott Speedman, Jay Rodan, James Franco and Joe Manganiello screen-tested for the titular role as well before the casting of Maguire. Franco and Manganiello would later go on to portray Harry Osborn and Flash Thompson respectively.
• Kate Hudson was approached for the part of Mary Jane Watson before the casting of Kirsten Dunst, but turned it down due to scheduling commitments with The Four Feathers.
  • Tara Reid, Alicia Witt, Mena Suvari, Eliza Dushku, Elisha Cuthbert, Kate Bosworth and Elizabeth Banks also auditioned for the role of Mary Jane Watson before the casting of Dunst. Banks would eventually go on to play Betty Brant in the movie.
• Billy Crudup was initially chosen as Norman Osborn before Willem Dafoe was cast. However, Crudup dropped out of the project due to scheduling conflicts with Almost Famous and on the fact that he considered himself "too young" for the part.
  • Jim Carrey, John Travolta, Robert De Niro, Bill Paxton, Mel Gibson, Jason Isaacs, Nicolas Cage and John Malkovich were approached for Norman Osborn as well before the casting of Dafoe. Cage would go on to play Johnny Blaze and Spider-Man Noir in two Ghost Rider movies and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse respectively. Malkovich was slated to portray the Vulture in Spider-Man 4 before it was cancelled and replaced with The Amazing Spider-Man.
• R. Lee Ermey, Christopher Lloyd and Dennis Farina were considered for the role of J. Jonah Jameson before the casting of J. K. Simmons.
• Chris Columbus was offered to direct the film before Sam Raimi was hired. However, Columbus turned down the offer in order to helm Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
  • David Fincher was also approached to direct the movie. Fincher's version would have told the origin story in the opening credits and would have been based on The Night Gwen Stacy Died.
  • Ang Lee, Tony Scott, Tim Burton, Roland Emmerich, Barry Sonnenfeld and M. Night Shyamalan were considered to direct the film as well before Raimi was hired.
• Hugh Jackman was scheduled to make a cameo appearance as Wolverine, and even showed up in New York to film his scene. The plan fell through at the last minute when the production staff was unable to find the Wolverine costume from X-Men.
• A much more comic-accurate mask was designed for the Green Goblin, and utilized makeup and animatronics to convey life-like facial expressions. The reasons why this was ditched vary, as some reports state that it was Sam Raimi's decision, as he felt that it would break the audience's Willing Suspension of Disbelief to have a latex/rubber/silicone mask that moved like that without explanation. However, other reports state that it was the decision of producer Avi Arad, who according to the reports had allegedly stated, "We're trying to sell toys here, not scare children."
• Doctor Octopus was in the early draft of the script to appear as the second bad guy. Later on in pre-production it was decided that he be reassigned to Spider-Man 2.
• The original screen test for the movie had the character's intro scene play out in a significantly grittier fashion, complete with Cluster F Bombs from the thugs.
• At one point during production, Spidey was to have mechanical web shooters. Contrary to popular belief, they would not have replaced the organic webbing, instead being a device that focuses them to help Peter aim. Footage exists of the scene where he tries out his webs in his room, that shows (even in the shots that were used in the film, which were later edited) he had the shooters on his wrists. The E3 2002 trailer for the film even shows the shooters' full design, taken from that same scene. (In the final film, look carefully at Tobey Maguire's wrists, and you'll notice very slight blurring where the shooters were supposed to be). The novelization by Peter David still has the web shooters, since it was based on a script that had them.
• As detailed in Behind the Mask of Spider-Man by Mark Cotta Vaz (a tie-in publication with the film), three scenes were ultimately storyboarded but left unfilmed. These included a scene where Peter would realize that he has organic webshooters in his school's bathroom just prior to the fight with Flash Thompson, a sequence where Peter would go to a public library to research various spiders and their capabilities after realizing his newfound powers, and sequence(s) where Spidey would rescue one of Oscorp's board members, Fargus, from the Green Goblin, in what would have been their second proper confrontation (along with a scene where Spidey is briefly captured by a SWAT team before escaping). The first sequence was never filmed because it was considered extraneous considering the tension that ramps up after the cafeteria scene; the second was condensed into a short sequence where Peter realizes the extent of his powers (including wall-climbing) in an alley after glimpsing a spider-web; the third was ultimately never filmed due to scheduling issues. Storyboards from all three sequences are shown in the book.
• Stone Temple Pilots was originally going to have their song "All in the Suit That You Wear" in the movie's official soundtrack, but they pulled it out at the last minute when it wasn't the lead track.
• According to a 2023 interview, Raimi planned on having the web swinging done practically, with a special rig swinging Spider-Man through the streets of New York. VFX Supervisor, John Dykstra shot this down, his exact words being "Sam, if you try that, you're going to kill somebody."

Spider-Man 2

Spider-Man 2

• After a back injury during the production of Seabiscuit, Tobey Maguire was almost replaced by Jake Gyllenhaal as Peter Parker before Maguire was able to recover for the film. Gyllenhaal would eventually go on to play Quentin Beck in Spider-Man: Far From Home.
• Christopher Walken, Robert De Niro, David Duchovny, Ed Harris, Sam Neill, Chris Cooper and Liev Schreiber were considered for the role of Otto Octavius before the casting of Alfred Molina. Neill would later go on to portray an Asgardian actor playing Odin in Thor: Ragnarok, while Cooper would play Norman Osborn in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Schreiber would portray Victor Creed and Wilson Fisk in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse respectively.
• Stan Lee was originally going to deliver the "He stole that guy's pizza!" line. An outtake of this can be seen at the end of the DVD's blooper reel.
• Michael Chabon, hot off winning a Pulitzer Prize for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, was hired to write the screenplay for the movie. While his draft wasn't fully used, enough elements were for him to receive a screenwriting credit. In his draft:
  • Otto Octavius was younger, single and in a Love Triangle with Peter and Mary Jane.
  • Harry would've gone into extreme paranoia after Norman's death, and takes out a $10 million bounty against Spider-Man, meaning that Peter has to save people trying to kill him for the reward money.
  • Doctor Octopus' obsession with his exo-arms is framed as an addiction.
  • Peter inexplicably losing his powers is given an answer as Otto gave him a microchip meant to reverse his spider DNA. Later on, Peter's forced to become a Combat Pragmatist against Doc Ock.
  • Doc Ock doesn't become fused with his arms until the subway fight.
  • Doc Ock is obsessed with Spider-Man because the chip he gave him can stabilize his fusion with the bionic arms.
  • Aunt May would've been angrier with Peter when she finds out that he could've stopped Uncle Ben's killer. Later on, they have a discussion where feeling crushed by your responsibilities is normal, not something you can escape from, and not a special destiny.
  • Peter would've gotten his powers back by taking a knife and pliers and digging the chip out.
  • Doc Ock captures Spider-Man, and Mary Jane and Harry find out about Peter's secret identity.
  • And lastly, it's Mary Jane who convinces Otto to abandon the experiment through their prior connection, and Spider-Man breaks free and saves Mary Jane.
• Doc Ock aside, previous drafts included the Lizard and Black Cat villains. Another draft featured a younger Octavius who created the spider that bit Peter. In the end, all ideas were scrapped, though Black Cat was still featured in the video game adaptation.
• An additional fight scene between Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus on a collapsing water tower was storyboarded but never used in the finished film.
• There was to be a scene where Otto, after having become Doctor Octopus, confronts Dr. Connors and ends up attacking him. The scene is used in the video game adaptation, however.
• After Spidey quits and J. Jonah is given the discarded suit there was a scene where he prances around in it in his office. This was cut and later readded as a deleted and extended scene because he was supposed to come across as a total goof, and he does, but J. K. Simmons looked too good doing it.

Spider-Man 3

Spider-Man 3

• Elisha Cuthbert and Scarlett Johansson were considered for the role of Gwen Stacy before Bryce Dallas Howard was cast. Johansson would eventually go on to portray Natasha Romanoff in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and meet a different incarnation of Peter Parker.
• Willem Dafoe filmed several scenes as Norman Osborn in Harry's hallucination, but the final movie only has one.^note Contrary to the belief of some viewers, the flashback of Harry cradling Norman's body was not shot for this film, but was archive (unused) footage from Spider-Man.
• Around this time, Elizabeth Banks was reportedly considered to play the Invisible Woman in Fantastic Four and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Had this happened, Sony would have considered casting a different actress to replace Banks as Betty Brant.
• The Vulture, who would've been played by Ben Kingsley, was originally going to be one of the main antagonists in the film and would play the Final Boss role that Venom ended up playing. He was ultimately scrapped since his role had no meaningful or personal connection to the hero at all, he was merely Flint Marko's cellmate who hated Spider-Man for putting him in jail to begin with, which likely means any scene involving the symbiote would've been substituted with Spidey battling against Vulture early in the film, likely sometime before Marko became Sandman.
• Neither Venom nor Gwen Stacy were present in the original planning packet, with a random woman serving the role Gwen later took.
• Spider-Man's symbiote suit was originally going to look identical to the one in the comics, being made of black latex. However, Sam Raimi thought it looked too much like a gimp suit and opted to go with a black and silver version of Spider-Man's original costume.
• Numerous sequences were filmed and ultimately scrapped from the final product, with some left in a state of limbo and no word as to the status of whether filming was completed. A separate cut, Spider-Man 3: Editor's Cut, was initiated by film editor Bob Murawski to unofficially commemorate the film's 10th anniversary, and does integrate some unused material, though plenty more is still lost on the cutting room floor.
  • Adrian Lester would've portrayed a doctor whom Marko strong-arms into helping find a cure for his daughter. His character ended up on the cutting room floor, though outtakes from a sequence where Marko confronts him in his laboratory (asking for a cure for his daughter), which was detailed in the novelization, eventually appeared on the Sony Pictures Stock Footage website.
  • In the first trailers revealing his presence in the movie, Venom looked a lot more similar to his classic comic book portrayal, but was later changed to match his appearance in the film.
  • Also, Gwen was originally going to be kidnapped for the final battle, not Mary Jane; Mary Jane would have talked sense into Harry instead of Harry's butler. A line Mary Jane said for this scene was actually used in the trailer: "We've all done terrible things to each other, but we have to learn to forgive each other or else everything we ever were will have meant nothing."
  • A scene with Eddie Brock coming to the Stacy's front porch and begging Gwen to take him back was actually filmed but not included in the final version, mainly since it connects with Gwen being the kidnap victim in the end, which was also cut. A few seconds of the sequence, showing a profile shot of Eddie talking to Captain Stacy at Gwen's house (with no sound) was found and put online in 2022.
  • The scene where Marko meets Eddie was quite different from the "90's Batman" villain team-up that was shown. After seeing Flint pretending to be sand in a park's playground for his little girl to play on, Eddie comes up and talks to him, and convinces him that his girl may be cured yet, and he will help him get the cash if Flint helps him take on Spider-Man. This, followed by him learning from his daughter that she is irrevocably sick and just wants to die with her dad a good man, makes his Heel–Face Turn at the end, and Peter forgiving him, much more credible and poignant. The first half of the original park sequence was later included in the Editor's Cut (all the way through Marko reforming after Penny leaves the park), though the original conversation between Marko and Eddie has not been released to date.
  • Eddie Brock's death was originally different than in the end product, where he was blown up by a pumpkin bomb while trying to rebond to the Venom symbiote. Originally, Peter was going to impale Venom on a metal blade, only to watch in horror as the symbiote sloughed away and revealed it had consumed its host — leaving only a skeleton with glaring eye-sockets and fanged teeth behind. Footage of the original "skull" prop was eventually found on the Sony Pictures Stock Footage website, though it's not clear if the sequence was ultimately filmed or was left incomplete.
• It is also rumored that John Jameson was originally to have an appearance, unknowingly bringing the symbiote back from his astronaut mission like he has in two other adaptations.
• It is also rumored that J. Jonah Jameson hired Eddie Brock to spy on Peter, after MJ left his son at the altar.
• Sony also tried for several years to get a Venom project off the ground, beginning in 2007. The studio commissioned several writers to do treatments, but none of these got past the planning stages and were eventually scuttled for years after the Amazing reboot was announced. This was eventually subverted when Sony got Ruben Fleischer on board to direct Venom.

The Amazing Spider-Man

• Josh Hutcherson, Logan Lerman, Alden Ehrenreich, Anton Yelchin and Jamie Bell were the final contenders for the role of Peter Parker before Andrew Garfield was cast. Bell would eventually go on to play Ben Grimm in Fantastic Four.
  • Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Michael Angarano, Frank Dillane and Joe Jonas screen-tested for the titular part as well before the casting of Garfield. Johnson would later go on to portray Pietro Maximoff and Kraven the Hunter in Avengers: Age of Ultron and Sony's Spider-Man Universe respectively.
• Lily Collins, Teresa Palmer, Emma Roberts, Imogen Poots and Mary Elizabeth Winstead were considered for the role of Gwen Stacy before the casting of Emma Stone.
  • Mia Wasikowska, Dianna Agron, Georgina Haig and Dominique McElligott also auditioned for Gwen Stacy before the casting of Stone.
• Christoph Waltz and Michael Fassbender were considered for the part of Curt Connors before Rhys Ifans was cast. Fassbender would eventually go on to play Erik Lehnsherr in the X-Men Film Series.
• Julianne Nicholson was originally chosen as Mary Parker before the casting of Embeth Davidtz, but dropped out of the project due to scheduling commitments to August: Osage County.
• Wes Anderson, Kathryn Bigelow and David Fincher were initially offered to direct the film before Marc Webb was hired. Fincher was previously considered to helm Spider-Man before Sam Raimi was hired.
• The script for Spider-Man 4 which caused Raimi to leave the series and Columbia Pictures opt to simply go for a Continuity Reboot rather than find a new director and cast to continue Raimi's story. For more info on the script itself, see here.
• A lot of footage that featured Dr Connors wound up cut from the film, including a brief appearance of his son Billy and a sequence that saw Spider-Man encountering Dr. Rathra in Connors' lair after the fight at the school and ultimately ended in the Lizard killing Rathra. These scenes were later included on the DVD.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

• Sam Claflin, Eddie Redmayne, Alden Ehrenreich, Douglas Booth, Brady Corbet and Boyd Holbrook screen-tested for the part of Harry Osborn before Dane DeHaan was cast. Ehrenreich previously auditioned for Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man. Holbrook would go on to portray Donald Pierce in Logan.
  • Michael B. Jordan also auditioned for the role of Harry Osborn before the casting of DeHaan. Andrew Garfield actually recommended him appearing in the movie as a male Mary Jane Watson. Jordan would eventually go on to play Johnny Storm in Fantastic Four and Killmonger in Black Panther respectively.
• Mads Mikkelsen, Damian Lewis and Jean Dujardin were considered for the part of Max Dillon before the casting of Jamie Foxx. Mikkelsen would later go on to portray Kaecilius in Doctor Strange.
• Among the shelf of Oscorp inventions, the Venom symbiote was supposed to appear in the Rhino armor's place, according to trailers and test screenings. This is consistent with the previous plans for a Venom Spin-Off set in the Amazing Spider-Man universe, though the eventual movie wound up being set in its own canon.
• According to Marc Webb and James Vanderbilt, Spider-Man was originally going to keep his original costume from the first film throughout at least the first act, with an unfinished opening swinging sequence and storyboards depicting his first battle with Electro in Times Square showing him wearing it. As well, the opening heist he'd be stopping would be set at dusk instead of early noon during the graduation ceremony, lead by Herman Schultz. However, due to widespread dislike of the first film's suit, Sony mandated a redesign of the suit to be more comic-accurate. Webb states he'd have been in favor of it being a story-necessary change, having Peter or Gwen craft a new suit for the second act if the studio hadn't been hellbent on appeasing the unhappy fans.
• According to test screenings, The Stinger revealed that Norman Osborn's head was placed in cryogenics - and while there's no evidence that this scene isn't canon, it still didn't make it into the movie. In addition, there is evidence that the scene where the Gentleman walks by Doctor Octopus's arms and Vulture's wings and also sets up the formation of the Sinister Six was supposed to be The Stinger, but it was edited into the film proper - most likely so the Days Of Future Past footage could fit in.
• The original script would've treated the immediate aftermath of Gwen's death in a much closer manner to the original comics. Harry would've started laughing and taunting Peter, resulting in Peter snapping and beating the hell out of Harry. The ending was changed from that of the comics, however, with Harry being turned in by Peter instead of dying (as had happened to Norman Osborn's Goblin).
• Felicia's role was also cut down for time, and she originally would have been Harry's out and out girlfriend - which Felicity Jones alluded to in an interview. One scene implying a romantic attraction between Harry and Felicia remains in the film.
• Several notable changes were made to the film's script.
  • Mary Jane Watson was going to be in the movie, played by Shailene Woodley. She was originally going to be introduced as a minor character who lived near Peter's home, having to deal with her abusive father. The plotline would have involved Peter showing up as Spider-Man, webbing her father up, and telling him off before leaving him hung up. A scene involving Mary Jane and Gwen having a conversation about romance was also planned, which would have served as connective tissue for future installments. However, according to eagle-eyed viewers, apparently one scene with Mary Jane made it into the final film, being a Freeze-Frame Bonus during the final fight of Spidey against Rhino, with a shot from the inside of a diner depicting the explosions from the Rhino's missiles shattering the windows and patrons an employees thrown back, the waitress shown from the back is apparently her.
  • Max Dillon's character was going to have been explored to a greater length, such as the character having a seemingly-wheelchair-bound mother apathetic to the apparent death of her son, not to mention that she ignores his birthday. (This was shot and is on the DVD and Blu-Ray).
  • Doctor Kafka was originally written as a woman, like the character in the comics, instead of as a man. It's also likely that the character wouldn't have suffered from Adaptational Villainy, given that Electro originally escaped from Ravencroft on his own and that there was apparently no torture involved (or at least, Kafka wouldn't have authorized it). In fact, according to Vanderbilt and Webb, instead of the middle of the movie, Electro's incarceration at Ravencroft was supposed to happen at the end of the movie, with Max's restraints being far more humane and Ashley being far more sympathetic and introspective towards his condition, albeit he's still seething with vengeance and makes a different version of his No Holding Back Speech to her, much to her disappointment. Laura Haddock was reportedly offered the role of Ashley Kafka, who while interested, was preoccupied and unwilling to acquiesce to the strict scheudle, leading Jeff Pinkner and Avi Arad to hastily rewrite the character as a stereotypical Germanic mad doctor lacking in scruples and bringing in German actor Marton Csokas for the role as Ludwig Kafka. Marc Webb was DECIDEDLY unamused by this change and fought hard to get the character killed off by Electro, backed by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.
  • A year-long Time Skip was planned to occur between Peter's graduation and Harry Osborn's return to the United States, which also would have given Peter and Gwen a greater amount of time to re-evaluate their relationship after breaking up.
  • Doctor Rajit Ratha, who had mysteriously disappeared after the Lizard's first appearance, was originally going to have a role in the movie, apparently serving the role of Harry Osborn's The Dragon that Donald Menken would serve, but much as he'd been to his father, would be far more sympathetic to Harry's plight as he'd been friends with Norman and overall invested in his own well-being, being the one to tell Harry about the Green Goblin armor and glider, which was hidden in a compartment of Norman Osborn's boathouse, alongside a perfected version of Richard Parker's spider-venom serum, dubbed OSP-178-COMPOUND OZ, assigned to the Osborn DNA signature, setting up the Green Goblin for The Amazing Spider-Man 3 instead. The plot point was apparently trashed completely if The Daily Bugle Tumblr is to be believed, as it stated that Ratha's body had been found in the sewers. His role was replaced entirely by Donald Menken, who is far more weaselly and trecherous, authorizing absusive treatment of Electro in Ravencroft Institue under Dr. Ludwig Kafka and an overall contemptuous attitude towards Harry.
  • Spider-Man originally decided to save Harry Osborn's life with a blood transfusion at Harry's second request rather than to refuse to do so twice. This still would have turned him into the Green Goblin, of course. The Green Goblin's suit was actually given an explanation in that it was meant to sustain Norman Osborn's life, but also contained a small arsenal for his use - complete with pumpkin bombs and the glider - and the suit would have been found within Norman's boathouse instead of within Oscorp. In addition, Electro originally was going to try to kill Harry, but Electro saw potential in the Green Goblin and formed an Enemy Mine to take down Oscorp.
  • J. Jonah Jameson was actually going to appear in the film, alongside Robbie Robertson. Spider-Man and Electro were originally going to crash into the building during one of their battles, much to Jameson's disdain. Of course, it was made no secret by fans of the previous Spider-Man Trilogy and Marc Webb himself that none than J. K. Simmons would've reprise his legendary role refitted for the new setting, while Denzel Washington and Sterling K. Brown were eyed for Robbie. Kurtzman and Orci both had hoped to also include Betty Brant in a cameo, specifically writing the role with Zooey Deschanel in mind.
  • The kid that Spider-Man helps at the beginning and end of the movie was not written into the original script. In addition, the Rhino's screentime was supposed to be even more limited than it was in the final film - and the truck heist at the beginning wasn't supposed to have featured Aleksei Sytsevich, but a typical thug.
  • Gwen Stacy wasn't originally going to die instantaneously, as she originally suffered from severe back injuries instead of a Neck Snap. She was also meant to have a Final Speech where she told Peter not to give up.
  • The last few minutes of the film were also going to be radically different: instead of listening to Gwen's graduation speech, Peter is encouraged to become Spider-Man once more by his father, who had been revealed to have been alive. He reveals that he'd been watching Peter from afar, and that he's proud of his son for the courage he's displayed as Spider-Man, and tells him "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility". It was Marc Webb who vetoed this HARD, as they couldn't undermine Gwen's death by following it up with the reveal that Richard Parker was still alive, and it would also undermine Peter by having him struggle to move past Gwen's death only for his father to return and fix everything, taking away from what he'd intend for the third film. However, the scene was shot and can be seen on the DVD and Blu-Ray releases.
• The scene with Harry locked up in Ravencroft after Gwen's death wasn't in the original script. It was added after it was realized that Harry wasn't seen again after Gwen's death and the viewer would be left questioning if Harry had died or simply escaped. Granted, in James Vanderbilt's actual original script, Harry wouldn't have become the Green Goblin at all, rather being alluded to when Harry finds the armor and glider, alongside a perfected serum based on Richard Parker's (likely thanks to Ratha being able to successfully replicate it from Peter and Connors' completed formula solving the decay-rate algorithm, with help from Sergei Kravinov and Norman himself) in his parents' boathouse in a secret compartment that responded to a DNA access code. Granted, even then the ending would've still been too similar to Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2, also showing Harry set up as the Goblin.
• With Sony and Marvel sharing Spider-Man and a movie reboot, Spider-Man: Homecoming, set in the MCU for 2017, the Sinister Six movie and Amazing 3 lapsed into this.
  • The Sony hack revealed several details about the Sinister Six movie. The Sinister Six were actually going to be the heroes of the film, and Spider-Man would've teamed up with them to help stop a rip in the space-time continuum. The film's climax would've taken place on the Savage Land and the Six would fight the Big Bad of the movie, Gog. After several concerns about the budget, tone, and whether or not Sony actually had the rights to these places and characters, it was decided to merge the Sinister Six film with the in-production Venom: Carnage movie. This didn't get far before the deal with Marvel broke through and production on the film was scrapped.
  • There were various ideas for which villains would be featured in the film, as well as who would play them. One email reveals that Scorpia was going to be part of the team, and that Drew Goddard had wanted Emily Blunt or Rose Byrne to play her, while Amy Pascal suggested Emilia Clarke and Elizabeth Olsen (who would go on to play Scarlet Witch in Age of Ultron). Goddard also wanted Tom Hardy to play the Sandman. Doctor Octopus (with casting suggestions ranging from Sean Penn to Denzel Washington) would have been the team's leader, and would have been given some personality quirks in order to avoid seeming boring.
  • The e-mails also mentioned that Channing Tatum was very interested in portraying Venom in a solo spin-off, but was taken out of consideration when he agreed to star in Fox's Gambit movie instead.
  • Sony had announced that Black Cat and the Spider-Slayers were intended to appear in sequels and spin-off films, with Felicity Jones and B.J. Novak reprising their roles. Jones as Black Cat even would get a solo film of her own, with Tombstone considered as the villain.
  • Jessica Drew, the original Spider-Woman, was also considered for future movies, with Angelina Jolie and Kate Beckinsale in mind for the role.
  • Taking a note from the Ultimate Spider-Man comics, Emma Stone jokingly suggested bringing back Gwen Stacy by making her into Carnage. Hannah Minghella actually liked the idea, and said that it had potential to be "really cool/sexy/intense to see."
  • The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and 4 were going to be released in 2016 and 2018 respectively. They were later delayed (Amazing 3 was delayed to 2018, and Amazing 4 was delayed to an unspecified date) before being cancelled outright.
  • According to Denis Leary, one of the proposed plot points for Amazing Spider-Man 3 would have seen Peter using a serum that allows him to resurrect the dead, allowing Captain Stacy (and presumably Gwen) to return.
  • There were plans to bring Emma Stone back to the franchise with a female-centric Amazing Spider-Man 2 Spin-Off, which would have starred Silver Sable and an alternate version of Spider-Woman. The film would have seen an eager young Silver reluctantly working as the recruiter for her dad's team, the Six Pack, despite wanting to be an actual member of the group. Early on, the Six Pack and Spider-Man would be taken out by Doctor Octopus and Mr. Negative, forcing Silver to recruit her own team (which would include Raul Quentino and a Somalian heroine named Lightbright) in order to save them and stop the villains. This would then lead to her teaming up with a Gwen Stacy (played by Stone) from a Parallel Universe, who would be revealed to be her world's Spider-Woman. Ironically, this idea actually predates the creation of Spider-Gwen!

Animated Films

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

• Among the candidates for older Peter Parker, one of them was Tobey Maguire, who previously played Spider-Man in the Sam Raimi films. They didn't go through with it so as to not overshadow Miles's story. Additionally, a Remake Cameo of him along with his successors Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland was written but got axed by Executive Meddling deeming it "too soon". Those three would instead have a live-action multiversal crossover. This was also eventually revisited in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse where in the multiverse hub for all the Spider-People, we see footage of both Garfield!Spider-Man and Maguire!Spider-Man mourning their respective Uncle Bens. The bit is even extended with Donald Glover having a cameo as one universe's Prowler, a call back to his cameo in Spider-Man: Homecoming where he is that universe's Aaron Davis (though only a petty crook when we see him there).
• An early draft of the script ended with a cameo from Doctor Strange, who presumably had to be removed for legal reasons.
• Miles and Gwen were originally planned to become a couple by the film's end, but producer Christina Steinberg convinced the writers to rein it back in to them being friends, with the romance subplot being saved for the sequel.
• The filmmakers had initially considered using Silk as their Asian-American Spidey, but eventually settled on Peni Parker because of her more unique power set compared to the other Spider-People. However, the character is planned to be used in a Spider-Women spinoff.
• The designs of Peni and SP//dr went through quite a few iterations (including a very Tachikoma-like SP//dr); the above article notes that Peni's design was particularly "iffy" until production designer Justin Thompson came up with the idea to portray her in an art style similar to that of Sailor Moon's.
• At one point, the creators were thinking about adding a gag where more and more Spider-People would keep on showing up throughout the course of the film, but nixed the idea in order to keep the movie focused on Miles.
• Rodney Rothman wrote a version of the script where Australian Spider-Man would show up alongside Noir, SP//dr, and Ham, but glitch to death right after his introduction. This particular idea never went past print, since production was already near completion.
• Ganke Lee was originally meant to be a significant supporting character◊ just like in the comics, but was ultimately Demoted to Extra both for the sake of tightening the movie's plot/pacing and because Spider-Man: Homecoming's version of Ned Leeds took so much from Ganke that the writers worried audiences would think they were ripping off Homecoming.
• In the original drafts, Doc Ock would be a "Big Lebowski type dude". And then co-director Bob Persichetti had the idea to do a Gender Flip so his friend Kathryn Hahn could play the role.
• Instead of having him somberly comfort Miles by telling him he can't save everyone, Spider-Ham had another joke in the scene where all the other Spiders tell Miles about the people they've lost. Although everyone thought it was hilarious and one of the best jokes in the movie, they removed it from the final cut and replaced it with his sorrowful lament because the joke undercut the drama and they wanted to show that Spider-Ham wasn't just a wacky cartoon character, he was a real person with real pain. Not only that, but the joke, given the context, could easily be interpreted as inappropriate by the audience. The joke in question, FYI, had him mourning the death of his "Uncle Frankfurter":
  Spider-Ham: (tearfully) He was electrocuted... and it smelled so good.
• At one point, director Rodney Rothman had written a scene featuring all three live-action Spider-Men, but eventually took it out for fears of confusing a general audience.
• An early animatic of storyboards shows several initial ideas for the film's story. Blonde Peter's death would've been a lot darker, with him being visibly disintegrated by the collider with his skull briefly visible. His tombstone also shows him having died at age 17.
• Ganke Lee was intended to have a bigger role and be voiced by Pixar's Peter Sohn, but because Spider-Man: Homecoming had its own version of Ganke in the form of Ned Leeds, he was Demoted to Extra. He does get more lines in Across the Spider-Verse, however.
• An original version of the "Leap of Faith" scene unceremoniously ends abruptly with Miles crashing into the semi-truck he leaps over during his swing, but then silently picks himself up to continue on to the Collider. The intent was to subvert "big hero moments" and Call-Back to the "get up" scene, as well as showing Miles having a more quiet resolution to his character arc by simply getting back up like Spider-Man is meant to. While the producers still played around with the idea enough to create a rough animation, they correctly predicted that the scene would've hurt the overall movie, be seen more as Narm, and scrapped it in favor of a more appropriate and triumphant ending.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

• Across the Spider-Verse was planned to be a two-part movie based on one massive script, but Sony opted to ditch the two-part format and retitle the second half of the production as Beyond the Spider-Verse.
• Mayday's concept art◊ shows she was originally planned to have heterochromia at one point unlike her comic counterpart, with her left eye being brown like her father's and the right being blue like her mother's. By the second trailer, however, this has been scrapped, as she retains the blue eyes of her comic book counterpart. Her hair in the concept art is also noticeably different from how it looks in the second trailer, as it is shorter and sports a darker shade of red akin to Mary Jane's hair color.
• Both Spider-Byte’s Funko Pop! figurine◊ and official PVC figure show a completely different design compared to the final design in the movie, which more closely resembles her suit from the comics. Both figurines feature a blue and red circuitry-inspired suit, long robotic arms and a completely different hairstyle. In the final film, her design has been completely reinvented, with a new purple color scheme and her hair tied back into buns. The fact that this design made it into the official merchandise suggests that this design was scrapped late into the movie’s development.
• The "First Look" trailer for the movie, back when it was Across the Spider-Verse: Part One, has a number of differences from the final movie. Most notable is that Miles' arrival in Mumbattan and his fight with Miguel were once the same scene, with Miguel tackling Miles out of Mumbattan and into Nueva York's Space Elevator. In the final movie, these two events are made separate and take place in the end of the first act and the climax respectively.
• Initial reports indicated that Takuya Yamashiro would appear in the movie, but he's nowhere to be found in the release. Given comments from Chris Miller, however, he likely ended up being saved for Beyond the Spider-Verse, as he was announced before the sequel was officially split into two films.
• The film initially had a post-credits scene starring the Spot. It was scrapped because the filmmakers felt it ruined the tone of the main movie's cliffhanger and, at that point in production, it would have been a confusing Orphaned Reference to an earlier scene that they already cut (the earlier scene would have seen the Spot go to a Bad Guy Bar and be relentlessly mocked, with the post-credits scene having him return to curbstomp everyone with his upgraded powers).
• Even more live-action scenes were going to be included, but ended up removed as the writers thought it became too much and the humor of it stopped working.
• The Superior Spider-Man was one of the many Spider-People chasing Miles in the trailers; however, in the final movie, he is replaced with a random, traditional Spider-Man.
• Concept art shows an older Peni Parker wearing a spider-themed plug suit straight out of Neon Genesis Evangelion, even wearing a jacket over it like Asuka does.
• Anya Corazón was going to have a design much closer to her comics counterpart, albeit still large and buff like a bodybuilder.
• Leaked movement test footage reveals that Earth-42 Miles was supposed to have more of an introduction that shows that both Aaron (as the original Prowler) and Miles of Earth-42 became Batman and Robin-esque vigilantes in lieu of Earth-42 Miles not becoming Spider-Man rather than become villains as the Cliffhanger implies; this is presumably done to keep an air of Ambiguously Evil between Earth-42 Aaron and Miles that leaves Earth-1610 Miles at an uncertainty to close the first part out on.
  • They also later revealed that Earth 42 Miles was, like the test footage shows, originally going to be the Prowler's sidekick, which didn't get the shocked reaction from test audiences they were aiming for. It wasn't until a while into production they got the idea that Earth 42 Miles would be the Prowler himself that they realised had much more of an impact.
  • Earth 42 Miles was generally going to have a bigger role instead of simply showing up at the end, but as the movies were split in two, his role in the story had to be saved for Beyond.
• One bit of concept art showed that the Marvel Zombies version of Peter was planned to be part of the Spider Society, but was cut for one reason or the other.
• Another deleted scene had Miles following Gwen while invisible to a construction site where he sees her talking to the holograms of not only Jess, but Miguel and other members of the Spider-society as well. He would eventually show himself to their surprise, directly asking Miguel's hologram why he couldn't be part of the Society and being rejected. He and Gwen would talk directly with Gwen telling Miles she had no choice in doing what Miguel ordered and that Miles had a better thing going with his parents than she did in the Society anyway. This version also appears to not have included Gwen and Miles' swing around the city as Miles reveals his suit to Miguel and Gwen refers to it as if she hadn't seen it before.
• If it wasn't for Daniel Kaluuya then Spider-Punk wouldn't have a role. It wasn't until the crew realized how Daniel fits well as Spider-Punk and thus appears in the film.
• This concept art reveals that there was a planned scene that takes place in a universe similar to Monument Valley.
• Another concept art reveals that there was also a planned universe that was going to have an art style similar to that of Robert Crumb.
• Earlier test footage for Gwen and Miles' swing around the city had a moment where they would photobomb a wedding couple, and later make a stop by a candy store so Gwen could get some M&M's.
• Yuhki Demers on Instagram revealed this concept art showing that there were plans to include Earth-66 (a prehistoric world populated by dinosaurs) complete with showing T-Rex versions of Miles and Gwen. Even though the final film didn't show Earth-66, Spider-Rex still appeared.
• Some concept art shows that Gwen and Miles would have been talking in a greenhouse before Rio arrived instead of the water tower.
• Earlier drafts of the Williamsburg Bank Building scene had Gwen putting her arm around Miles' arm instead of leaning against him. A similar draft of their talk on the water tower has Gwen nearly touching Miles' hand before Rio interrupts them.
• The writers considered Gwen arriving at Guggenheim to fight the Renaissance Vulture to be the opening of the movie, but eventually realised they needed a beginning that tied characters and character themes better together, along with tying in more emotion, thus Gwen playing drums, monologuing about Miles, her flashback of Peter and talk with her dad, became the opening instead.
• When the movie got split in two, the writers struggled with where to put the cliffhanger, and originally ended it at the moment Miles is tied to the punching bag and Prowler Miles puts his fist next to him. This was poorly received by test audiences, however, and the decision to show Miles ripping the glove, showing he was planning how to break free, along with Gwen having gathered her team to save him, got added in the last few months of production to make the cliffhanger more hopeful.
• There is test animation involving The Spot where he was originally going to have his main dot on his head to be more expressive yet it was scrapped because it felt that he would be better if he was robbed for using that ability thematically. Another reason is that it was deemed "too Venom-ish". See it yourself.
• A concept draft of the original intro is revealed to have shown a lot more Foreshadowing than the one in the final film, some of which would actually have spoiled reveals that would take place in Beyond the Spider-Verse as the conceptualized opening was made back when the script was still just one large film before being split into two halves; such reveals would have included one of the Spot turning into a massive Kaiju-esque version of his final form that is called The Abyss terrorizing Miles's New York against hundreds of Spider People while Gwen watched on.
• There is concept art where Miles' suit damage after fighting Miguel was going to be much worse, to the point it would have nearly been fully destroyed. This was possibly changed for looking exaggerated and leaving poor Miles with barely any clothes on.

Miscellaneous

Sam Raimi's cancelled Spider-Man 4:

• Fourth, fifth, and sixth films in the series were going to be released, but they were all cancelled and The Amazing Spider-Man was released instead. Only Spider-Man 4 actually had any work done for it.
• A script treatment was leaked online by an insider on the SuperHeroHype forums who was proven to be reliable, and goes in-depth into the proposed outline for the eventually-scrapped film. In it, Peter cheats on MJ with Felicia Hardy (to be played by Anne Hathaway), only instead of being the Black Cat, she would've been the Vulturess.^note While not being the Black Cat in the film, Hathaway playing a character who WAS the Black Cat in the comics is Hilarious in Hindsight seeing as she ended up playing Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises. Raimi later claimed that Hathaway would have played Black Cat after all, though it is unknown if this was a rewrite or if Felicia would change identities during the film. Meanwhile, he would be working to stop The Vulture (to be played by John Malkovich) and Electro. At the end, MJ abandons him and goes to Los Angeles, while Peter decides, out of depression, to once again give up being Spider-Man. Notably, this treatment shares some elements that would eventually be included in The Amazing Spider-Man Series (including the character of Max Dillon and his transformation into Electro).
• Some of the early treatments reportedly had Peter and MJ having a child, Peter killing the Vulture and beginning a relationship with Felicia, no longer the "Vulturess" here, which eventually causes MJ to abandon Peter and take their son. Like the other script treatments, the film would have ended with Peter abandoning his superhero career, though this time in part because his new fiancée is less than pleased with Peter killing the Vulture.
• According to several storyboards, the film would've opened up with a montage of Spider-Man taking out various "B-listers" from his Rogues Gallery. Bruce Campbell was in talks to make a cameo as Mysterio during this scene, which would've hinted that his previous cameos were all aliases of Quentin Beck.
• Radical Entertainment, the developers behind [PROTOTYPE] & [PROTOTYPE 2], were set to make a Licensed Game based on the film. Prototypes for Wii and Xbox 360 versions resurfaced in 2019 and 2021 respectively.
• Raimi also reportedly wanted to do more cutting-edge CGI work, but due to rampant Executive Meddling (including the film being Christmas Rushed to meet a May 2011 release date, plans to shoot 4 and 5 back-to-back without a script for the latter, and multiple scripts he said were terrible), Raimi walked away from the project, causing Sony to rush into production on what would eventually become The Amazing Spider-Man.
• Sony also tried for several years to get a Venom project off the ground, beginning in 2007. The studio commissioned several writers to do treatments, but none of these got past the planning stages and were eventually scuttled for years after the Amazing reboot was announced. This was eventually subverted when Sony got Ruben Fleischer on board to direct Venom.

Other Unproduced Movies

Early Ideas

• The very first pitch for a Spider-Man movie came in 1976. Little is known about the intended plot beyond that it would have involved Spidey fighting Nazis and giant robots, and it probably would have also been a musical. The concept was extensively reworked until it became the pilot movie for The Amazing Spider-Man (1978).
• The first genuine attempt to bring Spider-Man to the big screen happened in 1982. Roger Corman (who was a huge fan of the Spider-Man comics) acquired the rights to the property through Orion Pictures, and hired Stan Lee himself to write the screenplay. The script, in addition to a faithful adaptation of Spidey's origin story, would have featured a college-aged Peter Parker fighting to stop Doctor Octopus and avert a nuclear war with Russia. Peter would have had numerous love interests (including Mary Jane and a "sexy KGB agent"), and the film's climactic scene would have taken place in downtown New York atop the U.N. building, with Spidey doing lots of web-slinging and wall-crawling to avoid Doc Ock's tentacles (much like in Spider-Man 2). Unfortunately, Corman (who was accustomed to working on low-budget indie films) was ill-equipped to handle Lee's ambitious, big-budget vision for the film; production was continuously delayed, and eventually, Orion Pictures — concerned that the project would run over budget — allowed the rights to expire.

The Cannon Group

• The first treatment, written by Jim Shooter, was called Spider-Man: Operation Z. The story had Peter, already established as Spider-Man, investigating Kingpin's theft of various chemicals while fighting Kingpin's enforcer Bullseye. Towards the climax, Kingpin kidnaps Aunt May and Peter's fiancé, Lin, and holds them hostage to keep Spider-Man from interfering with the titular Operation Z, where Kingpin plans to release a chemical weapon on New York City and blackmail the government for the antidote. Bullseye tricks Spider-Man into thinking that Aunt May and Lin have been executed to get Spidey to kill Kingpin in revenge so Bullseye can take over, only for Kingpin to kill Bullseye instead. Spider-Man would then fight Kingpin in a helicopter which would crash into the river with only Spider-Man surfacing.
• The next plan to get a Spider-Man film off the ground was in 1985, when Tobe Hooper was set to direct a film for The Cannon Group starring Tom Cruise. Due to Cannon chiefs Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus not understanding the concept, the outline treatment had an original villain named Dr. Zork experimenting on Peter Parker (who would have worked as a company i.d. photographer) and turning him into a Body Horror-fusion between a spider and a human, who was also suicidal. Zork would have been creating an army of human/animal hybrids and wanted Peter to be their leader. Stan Lee immediately vetoed the concept on the grounds that it perverted the entire concept of the character (though elements of the story did ultimately see the light of day in the Neogenic Nightmare arc of Spider-Man: The Animated Series).
• While Hooper was still slated to direct the project, Ted Newsome and John Brancado wrote a script that was truer to the comics and even received Stan Lee's stamp of approval. The story would have followed a college age Peter Parker who works as a photographer for the tabloid newspaper the Daily Bugle, after his Professor, Otto Octavius (slated for Bob Hoskins) as Doc Octopus causes an explosion while conducting his experiments with the schools cyclotron, Peter gets bitten by the spider while taking pictures of the wreckage. Afterwards most of the familiar point's of Spider-Man's origin would pan out while Doc Ock works to build a new cyclotron to finish his experiments, which Peter needs to stop as it threatens to destroy the city if not the world. The script included Liz Allan as Peter's love interest, Flash Thompson, who's characterization veers more towards a Lovable Jock, and Harry Osborn as Peter's nerdy prankster best friend whose antics almost cost him his scholarship. The script also introduced two new characters: Professor Solomon Rosomoff and Alexander Thorkel (created with Hammer Horror icons Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in mind), Thorkel would end up being killed by Doctor Octopus while Prof. Rosomoff go on to help Spider-Man thwart the mad doctor's plan, with his last scene ending on the implication that he knows Peter is Spider-Man. It was also during this time that Tobe Hooper left the project to focus on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and was replaced by Joseph Zito (of The Prowler fame).
  • Scott Leva was hired to play Peter Parker/Spider-Man, and although no one else was officially cast there were a number of actors considered, most notably Katharine Hepburn or Lauren Bacall for Aunt May with Adolph Caesar for some smaller role. On top of all that, Stan Lee himself wanted to play J. Jonah Jameson.
  • The Newsom/Brancado script would be revised a few times before being shelved. Some added elements would include giving Doc Ock a catchphrase ("Okey dokey then"), having his tentacles be called "waldos" in the script and giving him a sidekick in the form of a lab assistant named Weiner that he constantly insulted throughout the movie and who would have been responsible for Uncle Ben's death. Other elements added to the plot included a planetary alignment and Doctor Octopus trying to steal Peter's physics paper to complete his experiment.
• The following year (1986), Menahem Golan (under his pseudonym Joseph Goldman) wrote his own movie script. Due to concerns of a limited budget, the script ended up being a retelling of Amazing Fantasy #15 with a heavy dose of Adaptation Expansion: Gwen Stacy appears in the script, serving as the Betty to Liz Allen's Veronica, Peter's character arc involves Acquired Situational Narcissism from his wrestling career, and the main antagonist is a teenage street thug named Knight, accosts the Parker family before attempting to steal a priceless gem that's being showcased on a talk show that Spider-Man is also being featured on, afterwards he would attack Uncle Ben in his store and end up killing him. After learning about his uncle's death, Peter briefly becomes so enraged he turns into a spider monster (Golan was still under the impression that Spider-Man had a werewolf-like element to him) before going after Knight.
  • Director Albert Pyun was then hired to direct the film for Cannon, after Joseph Zito walked out.
  • Filming was set to take place at Dino De Laurentiis' studio in Wilmington, North Carolina. With a $6 million budget, the Brooklyn sets were built for the film on the Wilmington stages, a teaser trailer was released (though too late to remove Zito's name that was infamously heard in said trailer) and publicity photos of Leva as the character were taken. Pyun had originally planned to film two weeks worth of scenes for Spider-Man before Scott Leva's nerdy Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider, then Leva would undergo a supervised eight-week workout regimen to build muscle mass while director Pyun would film Masters of the Universe Part 2, and filming for Spider-Man would resume for the scenes after Peter gets his spider powers. However, both projects were scrapped due to Cannon's stretched-thin finances. Albert Pyun was then given the task to make a movie out of the 2 million-worth of costumes and sets already built for both projects, came up with a script on a single weekend, and 24 days of rushed filming and editing later, the cult-classic Jean-Claude Van Damme starring Cyborg was released.
• Don Michael Paul would revise Golan's script, expanding the role of the scientist who conducted the experiment which created the Radioactive Spider into the main antagonist who would turn himself into the bat-like Night-Ghoul (there were concerns at the time that Cannon didn't have the rights to any of Spider-Man's rogues gallery).
  • A second rewrite by Ethan Wiley altered the script more significantly with Peter's paraplegic science teacher creating a drug to try and cure his paralysis while selling the failed experiments as steroids to criminals, a spider is injected with one of his serums and bites Peter. Most of the film is treated as a coming of age story with the bulk of the superhero action happening at the climax when the Science Teacher uses the completed formula on himself and battles Spider-Man in a warehouse as the Scorpion Man.
• The last attempt by Cannon to make a Spider-Man movie saw the Newsom/Brancado script being revisited one last time. This time it was changed to Doctor Octopus inventing an anti-gravity gun for the mafia only to kill the mob's head honcho and take over. Doc Ock would have had Weiner track down Spidey to join Ock's gang which would once again result in him killing Uncle Ben, this time however Doc Ock would kill Weiner himself after deciding he didn't need him anymore.
• Ultimately the various scripts and rewrites went nowhere and the production rights were eventually licensed to Carolco Pictures, which led to...

Carolco Pictures

• James Cameron's aborted treatment for Spider-Man:
  • It would have followed the web-slinger, with Leonardo DiCaprio or Edward Furlong in mind for the role, as he establishes his powers in high school. In the treatment, the main villain is Carlton Strand (a.k.a. Electro), a former thief who was electrocuted and given very strong powers, which he has used to rise to the top of a large corporation. Peter Parker's origin follows the comic book closely (bitten by spider at university lecture), but goes off on a tangent once he starts falling for Mary Jane Osborn. After he finds out that her flashy image is a front and that she comes from a broken home, he sees Flash Thompson hit her, then proceeds to knock him out and destroy his car. Uncle Ben still dies, and his killer is captured by the police. Then, Parker seduces MJ by kidnapping her, taking her to the top of the Brooklyn Bridge, and doing a Spider mating dance for her. Strand teams up with a man named Boyd (Sandman) and kidnaps MJ, taking her to the top of the World Trade Center. The climax of the film is a pitched two-on-one battle with Spider-Man rescuing MJ and taking on both Strand and Boyd at the same time. He eventually wins by using one of the WTC's generators to fuse Sandman into molten glass, and ends up throwing Strand off the building. Although Carolco remained committed to producing the film, as evidenced by extending their rights to the character to 1996, financial and contractual problems led to Carolco shutting down production in 1992.
  • This is why Electro and Sandman didn't show up in Spider-Man: The Animated Series, which was created around the time Cameron's film was in development. Electro did eventually appear... as the Red Skull's son. By that time the Cameron script had been trashed.
  • Cameron's original screenplay tried to present Peter's growing powers as a metaphor for puberty, complete with him waking up in bed and covered in sticky white webbing. Cameron also had the idea of having Peter using web shooters to focus and disguise his organic webs.
  • Ultimately, Cameron's attempt never made it not only because of Carolco's own financial problems, but also because of a large legal battle between MGM (which had merged with Cannon and claimed they had the rights), Marvel (then in the midst of their mid-90s bankruptcy and a subsequent fight for control by various consortiums) and a couple other claimants (including 20th Century Fox, who were holding Cameron to a contract he'd signed with them). Ultimately, MGM and Sony made a trade — Sony got the Spider-Man rights from MGM, and in exchange, Sony wouldn't attempt their own rival James Bond movies by way of Kevin McClory (who was again trying to remake Thunderball like with Never Say Never Again).

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