11 Unmade Movie Adapatations That Were Just Weird

Comic book fans probably best remember The Cannon Group for their decision to halve Superman IV’s budget, and film scenes set at the UN outside of a bus depot in Milton Keynes. Which makes it a huge relief that they never properly got their hands on Spider-Man.

In 1985, Cannon had a five year window to make a Spider-Man movie, with the company heads’ fundamentally misunderstood vision for the Webslinger being a suicidal human-spider mutant created by Doctor Octopus. Peter Parker would have been an ID badge photographer, and after being bombarded with radiation, would escape and fight against the mutant army he was supposed to be part of.

Stan Lee rejected this outright, calling it a complete perversion of the character, and the script went through a number of changes. These included Spider-Man and Doc Ock being created by the same cyclotron accident, and Ock searching for the hypothetical Fifth Force of physics. Which is surprisingly similar to the Doc Ock we got in the far superior Spider-Man 2 in 2004.

The script went through multiple redrafts throughout the 80s and early 90s, at one point with James Cameron attached, and with casting ideas that included Peter Cushing, Bob Hoskins as Doc Ock, and Lauren Bacall as Aunt May. But creative differences and a series of financial troubles meant that the project never got off the ground, leaving the door open for the three Spider-Man reboots of the 21st century. Two of which were actually good.