The end of the wallcrawler with SPIDER-MAN 3?!

By: Patrick Sauriol
Date: Monday, October 11, 2004
Source: Latino Review

Here's a story that's causing us (and probably a lot of others) to blink in surprise: according to a just published Latino Review SPIDER-MAN director Sam Raimi is quoted as saying that Sony Pictures Vice Chairman Amy Pascal has told Raimi to wrap things up in the third SPIDER-MAN movie that he's currently working on!

"One thing that Amy Pascal told me was that she wants to make this a proper ending to the SPIDER-MAN saga," Raimi is quoted as saying on Latino Review. "I'd like to keep directing SPIDER-MAN movies but I think she's thinking that the audience feels they want to see one more and no more. They want to have a proper ending to the story now. So I think maybe she's right, and so I'm approaching it under her guidance and that's how I'm trying to think of this film as the end."

This latest statement from Raimi flies in the face of what producer Avi Arad has said and -- well, let's face it -- common business sense. While it may be admirable that Pascal is thinking first of creative burnout for her studio's superhero, the SPIDER-MAN films have been immensly successful for Sony and its Columbia Pictures branch, generating nearly two billions dollars worldwide at the box office so far. Arad had made earlier comments that he envisions six SPIDER-MAN movies, and with Marvel's track record of thousands of individual comic books over three decades featuring the wall-crawler, it seems a little premature to want to be closing the movie series right now. Or maybe Pascal is thinking more abstract: both Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst have said that they can't see reprising their characters past a third film, and so Pascal might be envisioning how best to close the chapter on a Maguire-Dunst-Raimi trilogy of SPIDER-MAN movies before recasting their roles.

Or maybe we just don't have a clue what Pascal is thinking.

Latino Review also has quotes from Raimi as to how he's approaching one of the story aspects of SPIDER-MAN 3, that being how to resolve the inner conflict that Harry Osborn now wages. In the comics Peter's friend went on to become a supervillain himself, picking up the mantle of his father and donning the Green Goblin costume. Nevertheless, even though all the ingredients are there for Harry to pick up his father's goblin mask and continue his hunt for the demise of Spider-Man in Raimi's film series, that may not be a direction that the director is willing to take.

"I'm not sure what's in Harry's mind," Raimi told the website. "I'm trying to figure that out right now. It's like if you blamed someone for the death of your father all these years and someone who was supposedly this hero, vigilante, and then you realized that your father was a mass murderer, it might change things.

"As much of a responsibility as I have to the fans of the comic books, I also have an equal responsibility to be true to the intelligence of the character as portrayed in the SPIDER-MAN movies."

For more thoughts direct from Raimi, go hit Latino Review's interview with the man.


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