8 Spider-Man Movies That Almost Happened

Back in 1985, long before Marvel licensed Spider-Man out to Sony Pictures, the comic book giant trusted a studio called Cannon Films with the character's film rights.

The studio commissioned a number of scripts over the years, none of which made it into development before the property changed hands, and its original attempt at a Spidey screenplay sounds, um, interesting.

Apparently Cannon chiefs Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus initially misunderstood the concept of the character, believing Spider-Man to be some kind of horror-esque monstrosity in the vein of the Wolfman or The Fly.

So they hired Outer Limits creator Leslie Stevens to pen a script about a hairy, suicidal, eight-armed monster who battles other mutated creatures in a laboratory after refusing to become part of a mad scientist's master race.

We're pretty sure Doctor Octopus, Carnage and the Green Goblin would never dream of messing with that incarnation of Spider-Man, but the character's creator Stan Lee intervened before this bonkers concept could progress any further.

Angered by the debasement of his creation, Lee pushed for Cannon to throw their weight behind a new screenplay by Ted Newsom and John Brancato, which told a more traditional Spidey story with Doc Oc as the villain.

This script would change hands several times and eventually become a precursor for James Cameron's Spider-Man which, of course, never saw the light of day either.