9 Ways The Amazing Spider-Man Almost Turned Out Awesome

7. A Low Budget

The history of movies made just to keep hold of character rights isn't an illustrious one. The pinnacle of the 'sub-genre' is Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four, a depressingly cheap adaptation that was made as legal loophole with no intent of ever being release (not that any one in the production was told that at the time), and while Sony weren't as balls-out cynical with The Amazing Spider-Man, they did follow a back-to-basics tact.

When it was first announced, The Amazing Spider-Man had a projected budget of $70 million, which, for reference, is less than a third of what Spider-Man 3 cost to make. The simultaneous announcement that the film would be in 3D (then still a big deal in the wake of Avatar) had many sceptical of whether that would be possible, but the intent was clear; this was Sony inexpensively keeping the rights, while trying to get the core idea of the character right in the process.

A low-budget Spider-Man would have most likely been a more Peter Parker-focussed adventure (hence the early presence of Mary-Jane and prominence of the Richard Parker mystery), dealing with the effects of being a high school-aged superhero. You know, what Spider-Man was originally about.

Of course, things didn't stay this way, with Sony revealing their bluff and going for the usual "shallow villain leads a CGI onslaught".