SPIDER-MAN Screenplay Credit Goes to WGA Arbitration

By: Steve Biodrowski
Date: Thursday, June 14, 2001

The screenplay credit for Columbia's SPIDER-MAN has gone to the Writers Guild of America for arbitration, in order to determine whose name or names will appear on the final film. When Columbia-TriStar submitted its suggestion for the credit to the WGA earlier this month, their recommendation was that David Koepp (STIR OF ECHOES) be the only name listed under 'Screenplay by;' however, several other writers had worked on the script, both before and after Koepp, including self-proclaimed 'King of the World' James Cameron.

The project has been bouncing around Hollywood since the 1980s, when producer Menahem Golan tried to interest his former mentor Roger Corman in directing a version filmed in Europe. The script went through several drafts there, before Golan's Cannon Group went belly-up. The project founds its way to TriStar, which had distributed Cameron's mega-blockbuster TERMINATOR 2, and in the mid-'90s Cameron wrote a so-called 'scriptment' (half script, half treatment), outlining his take on the comic book character. Still, the project didn't come together, and Cameron moved on to bigger and better things (depending on how you feel about TITANIC). In 1999, David Koepp was hired to expand Cameron's scriptment into a full screenplay. After Sam Raimi came on board as director, two more writers were asked to refashion the script, first Alvin Sargent, then Scott Rosenberg.

When multiple writers work on a script, the production company puts forward a suggested credit, informing the writers and sending a list of all their names to the WGA, specifying which should appear on the film and in which order. If no one objects, the credit becomes final; however, if any writer disagrees, the matter goes to an arbitration, in which three anonymous readers go through the various drafts and compare them to the finished film to decide whose work actually appears on screen.

What's interesting about Columbia's suggested credit for Koepp is that producers frequently favor giving credit to the last writer to work on a project. If the filmmakers didn't think Koepp's SPIDER-MAN script was ready to go until it had been reworked, one would expect Columbia to credit the writer or writers who turned in the final shoot draft.

Of course, there could be other considerations when it comes to credits, such as name value. Koepp has written several blockbusters, including MISSION IMPOSSIBLE and JURASSIC PARK, so it's not hard to understand why the studio would want his name on the film. But then, Cameron was responsible for the biggest-grossing film of all time, so not suggest co-credit for the screenplay?


There is one more element to the story. Cameron's scriptment was not the first pass at drafting a SPIDER-MAN film; it was based on the drafts developed at Cannon Group. But those drafts were not made available to the writers who worked on the project after Cameron (as David Koepp said during an interview with him last year: 'There really is only one treatment; Jim Cameron wrote a treatment. There are no previous drafts') Nevertheless, if any of that material survived through Cameron's treatment and made it into the final cut, there may be other writers who deserve at least a co-story credit on the film.