Sam Raimi Was Far From The First Choice To Direct Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man

Sam Raimi's 2002 film "Spider-Man" represents an inflection point in superhero cinema. There were plenty of hit superhero movies prior to "Spider-Man," of course — notably "Superman" (1978), "Batman" (1989), and "X-Men" (2000) — but "Spider-Man" was the first to make such extensive use of modern CGI to finally, for the first time, visually realize a well-known superhero character more or less the same way they looked on the comic book page. Previously, superhero characters were largely eschewed by Hollywood, either because they were "kid stuff" with small built-in audiences, or because they would be too expensive to make. "Spider-Man" was the first "casual" superhero blockbuster, to coin a term. Its special effects were just advanced enough to set it apart from the superhero movies that came before it. 

As such, "Spider-Man" kicked open the doors of the genre, ushering in a trend that would dominate Hollywood for almost 20 years. Sam Raimi's direction was loved by many, as he brought the appropriate studio slickness the material warranted, but was careful to also include his own hyperkinetic storytelling. "Spider-Man" was a giant hit, making almost $726 million. 

Raimi, as some may know, wasn't the original choice to direct "Spider-Man." When the project was still in development, he was but one of many potential directors that Sony had put into a finalists pool. Raimi talked about his competition for the job in a 2023 interview with Empire Magazine. Raimi didn't reveal the whole line-up of potential "Spider-Man" directors, but did recall the bustle he underwent to throw together a good "Spider-Man" pitch he could bring to Sony. This was back in 1999. It seems that he was very low on the list of directors Sony wanted.

According to Raimi, here's how it went down: 

"My agent said to me, 'Columbia Pictures is thinking of making Spider-Man. Is that something you want me to put your name in the hat for?' I said, 'Yes, I love Spider-Man. If they're really going to make it, that would be awesome.' Then he called me back, a month later, and said, 'Sony said there are 17 other directors they'd rather make the picture with than you.'"

So Raimi was 17th in line to direct, which doesn't sound like very good odds. But then his agent called him back a few months later and told him that the first eight directors had dropped out, and he was now only ninth in line. A few months after that, the studio had winnowed it down to Raimi and "one or two" other people. Enough directors had passed that Raimi was allowed to finally make his pitch. He said: 

"I went in and presented to Avi Arad, Amy Pascal and John Calley, who was chairman of Columbia Pictures at the time. I told them about my love for Peter Parker and all the great Stan Lee comic books, and how I loved the characters he'd created, and that if I got the job, I would not make the movie about Spider-Man, but about Peter Parker. I thought it went pretty well. But the next day, I read in Variety that they were hiring somebody else." 

That Variety article, by the way, announced that David Fincher had won the gig. Other stories from around the internet indicate that Raimi also beat out M. Night Shyamalan, Tim Burton, Chris Columbus, Tony Scott, Michael Bay, Ang Lee, Barry Sonnenfeld, Jan de Bont, and Roland Emmerich. Raimi, ultimately, was the right choice.