While we did once have Spider-Man movies brought to us by a director with a bit of personality, they have since been taken over by fairly bland and anonymous journeymen. Even if one of them was actually called Webb. And while it’s now extremely difficult to wrap your head around what it could possibly have been like – we almost had a Spider-Man movie directed by none other than David Fincher.
As far back as 1999, Fincher passed on the chance to direct a Spider-Man movie, and then when the chance came up again in the early 2010s, The Social Network director was once again on the list of people to call. But he just couldn’t get past Peter being bitten by a spider…
Back in 2011, while promoting Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, he told Gizmodo; “My impression of what Spider-Man could be is very different from what Sam [Raimi] did. I think the reason he directed that movie was because he wanted to do the Marvel comic superhero.”
He continued; “I was never interested in the genesis story. I couldn’t get past a guy getting bit by a red and blue spider. It was just a problem… It was not something that I felt I could do straight-faced. I wanted to start with Gwen Stacy…and I wanted to kill Gwen Stacy.” And not to spoil, but this shocking death did up end happening in The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
“The title sequence of the movie that I was going to do was going to be a ten minute — basically a music video, an opera, which was going to be the one shot that took you through the entire Peter Parker [backstory].” It sounds as though Fincher was influenced by seeing theatrical masterpiece Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark on Broadway starring Reeve Carney.
Fincher concludes by saying; “It was a very different thing, it wasn’t the teenager story. It was much more of the guy who’s settled into being a freak.” The director of Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac, Gone Girl and Mindhunter describing Spider-Man as a freak is almost too tantalising to bear. It’s very hard to imagine what a Fincher version of Spidey would have been like, but the chances are, it probably would have been incredibly cool.
See if you agree with our list of the best Spider-Man actors, ranked.