10 Movies Where The Director Hated The Source Material

2. Spider-Man 3

As excited as fans were to finally see Spider-Man's iconic arch-nemesis Venom (Topher Grace) adapted to the big screen, director Sam Raimi wasn't quite so enthused, to be kind.

Despite Raimi feeling that the character suffered from a "lack of humanity," while campaigning in vain to include The Vulture with Ben Kingsley already in talks to play the part, producer Avi Arad insisted that Venom instead be added as a secondary antagonist alongside Sandman (Thomas Hayden Church).

The result was a massively underwhelming treatment of the beloved supervillain, which just didn't work from a casting, conceptual, visual or storytelling perspective.

In more recent years, Raimi said of his ambivalence regarding the character, "I tried to make it work, but I didn’t really believe in all the characters, so that couldn’t be hidden from people who loved Spider-Man. If the director doesn’t love something, it’s wrong of them to make it when so many other people love it."

Given that both Raimi and Tobey Maguire withdrew from plans for a fourth film amid "creative differences," it's been widely speculated that the director's experience being railroaded on Spider-Man 3 prompted him to walk away.

Producer Arad, to his mild credit, ended up accepting the blame for twisting Raimi's arm. He said, "I think we learned that Venom is not a sideshow. In all fairness, I'll take the guilt because of what Sam Raimi used to say in all of these interviews feeling guilty that I forced him into it."